NO A.D.D. HERE

By William Fisher

I can’t tell you how comforting it is to know that at least a few folks manage to keep their focus regardless of what’s going on around them. No Attention Deficit Disorder here!

Take August 16, for example. In Iraq, there were the usual multiple car bombs and IED deaths. In Afghanistan, the resurgent Taliban continued to conduct lethal raids on Afghanis and Coalition troops. In Lebanon, a thousand people died and a million found themselves displaced by Israeli bombs. In Northern Israel, terrified families poked their heads out of bomb shelters, waiting for more sirens and more Hezbullah rockets. In Darfur, the genocide persisted unabated, while diplomats diddled. In Britain, the cops discovered an alleged plot to blow up UK-US flights. Here at home, poor people went on getting poorer, kids got sicker because they had no health care, and Katrina victims were still waiting for FEMA trailers.

But August 16 was the day I realized that, despite all these cataclysmic events, some people were still keeping their eye on the ball. Because August 16 was the day I got an email from none other than Dr. James Dobson.

The chairman of Focus on the Family Action needed my help. He asked me to write to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California “to take a stand against a pair of pro-gay bills that could become law in the Golden State.”

Specifically, he wanted me to “tell” the Governor to veto one bill, and “tell” state Assembly members to vote against another.

Dr. Dobson piqued my curiosity. Grassroots democracy in action!

The good Dr. Dobson explained that the first bill “would forbid recipients of California government funding from portraying homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality in a negative light.”

If passed, the other bill, he told me, “would force all public school teachers to present a one-sided message about homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender issues to students as young as five years old.”

To compound this bias, the bill calls for all facets of education to be stripped of any negative messages on homosexuality.

My First Amendment rights under attack?

This bill “seemingly came out of nowhere,” Dr. Dobson informed me, “with little fanfare. Both pieces of legislation are sponsored by openly gay state Sen. Sheila Kuehl,” Democrat of Los Angeles.

"The people of California have slept through this thing — at least some of them have — and they've got to wake up, because our kids, our churches, our schools are all at stake," Dobson said.

Typical of those laid-back Californians!

Then Dr. Dobson brought in a few allies to close the sale. The article on his website reported that Assemblyman Doug La Malfa, a Republican from Redding, California, had “pointed out that even the perception of homosexuality is protected, and Kuehl's bill does not provide for exemptions of any kind — not even a conscience clause.”

The legislation, LaMalfa went on, “would require faith-based organizations, in order to remain eligible for certain funds, to violate their heart-felt beliefs in order to comply with this."

Trying to separate church and state, eh?

And Barbara McPherson, legislative coordinator for the California Family Council in Sacramento, said, “In fact, anyone who does business with the state and adheres to Christian principles when it comes to homosexuality would be at risk if the bill becomes law. “

"Christian businesses who do any type of contract work with the state — let's say a Christian vendor who sells water — could conceivably lose their contract," she explained.

She must mean Holy Water!

Then came Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy for Focus on the Family Action, who called the measure a "straightjacket."

"I don't know but that a liberal court in California will say, 'Well, if you can call a policeman, you're getting benefits from the state,' so you now have to abide by this horribly strict anti-discrimination law," he said.

Those activist judges again! Upholding anti-discrimination laws!

Then came the coup de grace. The Focus on the family Action article reported that Gary Bauer, the high profile chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based group American Values, said, “homosexual activists have been pushing for decades to normalize homosexuality in the public mind.”

"We've allowed homosexuality out of the closet, and with legislation like this, men and women who believe in Judeo-Christian values are being told to get into the closet and be quiet," Bauer said.

Gary Bauer in the closet? Clearly no laughing matter!

Well, as you can imagine, I mouse-clicked furiously to the “write” page of AOL to compose my letter to the Governator. There was no time to waste!

But then it dawned on me that, since I don’t live anywhere near California, the Governor and the legislature would have little reason to pay attention to a non-voter.

Still, my hat’s off to these folks who refuse to be diverted by the sorry state of the world.

So let’s hear it for James Dobson, Gary Bauer, et al, and their Focus-on-Fear Action!

NOBODY EVER DIED FROM TALKING

By William Fisher

If, as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice famously declared, Israel’s response to Hezbullah’s rocket attacks marked “the birth pangs of a new Middle East,” the US is likely to be in labor for a long time.

Who won this 34-day war is still an open question. Both sides are claiming victory, though President Bush seems a lot more certain than the Israelis, whose fractious Knesset is already publicly questioning the quality of the Israel Defense Force strategy and leadership. But it is clear that this campaign put a large dent in the notion of Israeli invincibility.

And, at least as of now, made Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah a hero in much of Lebanon and most of the rest of the Muslim world. While diplomats were talking about donor conferences to mobilize international resources for reconstruction, Hezbullah was already handing out large amounts of cash to help the dispossessed relocate and start to rebuild.

The effectiveness of the United Nations cease-fire resolution – a measure the US actively delayed for weeks – remains to be seen. President Bush and Secretary Rice claimed vowed to block it until the UN agreed to address the “root cause” of the conflict. Hezbullah was identified as that root cause. But almost everyone agrees that Hezbullah is but one dangerous symptom. Ask Nasrallah about the root cause and he will tell you loud and clear that it is the very existence of the State of Israel.

Once Secretary Rice finally got around to working with France to develop a cease-fire resolution, objections from the Arab world and others obliged the UN Security Council to water it down virtually to the vanishing point. It is virtually identical to the Security Council’s previous resolution on this issue, except that the multinational force will be larger. If it ever materializes.

The most serious lapse was France’s insistence that it would not deploy troops for a “hot war.” While claiming it would “lead,” France has thus far agreed to provide only one engineering company, or about 200 soldiers. Moreover, the troops that join the multinational force in southern Lebanon will not be mandated to disarm Hezbullah. Nor will the Lebanese Government – of which Hezbullah is a member – whose army clearly lacks both the political will and the strength to do the disarming. Hezbullah is to disarm itself. Right!

Meanwhile, America’s delay in seeking a cease-fire and its seemingly unquestioning support of Israel’s arguably disproportionate response to Hezbullah attacks and hostage-taking was further alienating leaders in much of the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

And, while Lebanon and northern Israel were being battered, Israel’s “other issue” – the so-called roadmap to a two-state solution – wasn’t going away. The only thing that went away was media attention. Now Israel’s post-mortem investigation of the Lebanon campaign will make it even more difficult for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to make any progress on this key issue – on which the Bush Administration has been largely A.W.O.L. for six years. Now, that absence may not be critical; as a result of the Lebanon adventure, the US has lost its credibility as an “honest broker” of a comprehensive Middle East peace process.

The bottom line is that both the US and Israel have been significantly weakened by the Lebanon war. If there are any State actors who are perceived to have been strengthened by this adventure, they are Iran and Syria, Hezbullah’s patrons and facilitators. This may or may not be the reality, but it is the widely held diplomatic and public perception – so the reality may be irrelevant.

Meanwhile, Iran sits on its long border with Iraq, apparently able and willing to do whatever it takes to turn sectarian violence into a full-blown civil war. And Syria provides an ideal location for the trans-shipment of more deadly rockets to Hezbullah.

The timing could not be worse, because in a few weeks, the Security Council will again turn to the issue of trying to rein in Iran’s nuclear program. The US and the EU3 will press for robust sanctions; but it is doubtful the Russians and the Chinese will agree. The result may be no resolution, or another slap-on-the-wrist resolution that changes nothing. Yet, the US has had sanctions against Iran for some years and the oil-rich theocracy appears to have little trouble finding suitors.

If multilateral diplomacy via the UN fails to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, what’s left? It is now generally accepted that a US military option is a non-starter, though some of Mr. Bush’s neocon advisors refuse to recognize this inconvenient reality. The American experience in Iraq – not to mention the Israeli assault on Lebanon -- shows once again that neither air power alone nor even more conventional “shock and awe” tactics can defeat a well-trained, well-equipped guerilla insurgency. Even if we knew where Iran’s nuclear facilities were located.

Moreover, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the American military substantially over-stretched and it is doubtful that even the Karl Rove super-spin machine could get the American people to muster any appetite for yet another uncertain and expensive military adventure.

Thus, the one avenue still open to President Bush is the one he most fiercely rejects: direct talks between the US and Iran and Syria. Syria’s last attempt at a rapprochement with the US, several years ago, was rejected out of hand by the Bush administration. And, as Mike Wallace’s recent “60 Minutes” interview with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran made clear between the lines, a dialogue with the US is the only option his country might find attractive. Nothing would confer more legitimacy and dignity on the Iranian regime than engagement by the world’s remaining superpower. And neither Iran nor Syria can afford to risk being isolated from the rest of the world.

Conferring legitimacy and dignity on the Iranian and Syrian regimes should not be the rationale for engaging these regimes. The objective should be serious face-to-face diplomacy that leaves Iran and Syria in no doubt that there are rewards for cooperation and penalties for rogue conduct. Talks through proxies and threats in the Security Council are clearly not getting the job done.

At the end of the day, President Bush may be compelled to defer his “democracy now” rhetoric for realpolitik. He may actually have to authorize direct talks with Iran’s populist demagogue leader as well as with the Syrian leadership. This would doubtless trigger many in his party to label Mr. Bush as the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century. He would have to swallow his “birth pangs of a new Middle East” agenda and risk dealing with a cataclysmic rebellion from his party’s far-right wing.

But the more important question is how effective a lame duck Administration -- weakened by a bungled war, support of a questionable Lebanese adventure, and plummeting public support -- would be if such negotiations ever got started. For example, does the US still have the leverege to persuade Iran to exercise its influence over Hezbullah? And Syria to cease being Hezbullah’s supply line?

The prospects are not great, but may not be totally bleak. After all, there is only one USA. And talking to Iran and Syria doesn’t mean George W. Bush would jump on Air Force One and head for Tehran or Damascus tomorrow.

It has been 26 years since the US government had any official relationship with Iran. For the past six years, the president has tried to outsource negotiations with Iran to the EU3. And it has resisted talking with Syria at all, though Syria might be an easier task since the US still has diplomatic relations there.

Re-starting a genuine diplomatic dialogue with both these countries would likely begin with a lengthy series of much lower-level contacts. These would probably focus on narrower issues, rather than on any grand bargain. With luck, a framework for expanded and higher-level discussions might emerge. The parties might be able to identify and execute a few confidence-building measures. Eventually, far down this road, Secretary Rice would participate. All of this would be to prepare the ground for the president.

Critics of this option will point out that while Iran and Syria are talking to the US, Iran will be buying more time to develop its nuclear weapon and creating more sectarian violence in Iraq, Syria will be busy re-supplying Hezbullah, and both countries will be using US engagement to enhance their prestige in the world, while continuing to espouse the destruction of Israel.

And they could be right. That’s why the US should seek the cooperation of the major powers in the UN. But first the Bush Administration needs to get over its notion that engagement is appeasement. The US “engages” with many unsavory regimes throughout the world – and showers its financial largesse on many of them.

On a purely practical level, what choices does America have when it has run out of good options?

The best of the remaining bad options may be talking. And nobody ever died from talking.

the morning news

Poetry by Gwen Gould

morning wakens
glistening wet sun drops
on quivering leaves
whisper life

NY Times headlines
slip silently into my inbox
without the dramatic voice
of a newscaster

the words scream out
their horrific content
jarring the core
of my quiet

people are blown up
while they shop
ride the trains
travel to work

my garden vegetables
luscious green and swollen
from the monsoon-like rain
need weeding and tending

bombs
in the open market
kill innocent people
shopping for produce

I weed and spade
in dazed disbelief
tears mingled with sweat
fall on my broccoli

death is a high price to pay
for fresh vegetables

Gwen H. Gould is a well-known orchestra conductor.

BIRTH PANGS OF WHAT?

By William Fisher

President Bush sees the Israeli-Hezbullah conflict as “an opportunity.” Condoleeza Rice’s calls it “the birth pangs of a new Middle East.” These statements are likely to remembered by history as even more iconically absurd than Vice President’s Cheney’s description of the Iraqi insurgency as being “in its last throes.”

Israel’s expansion of its military campaign in Lebanon has turned the Arab world against the US, with the so-called moderate governments of the Middle East – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, as well as most of the “Arab Street” – now more estranged than ever from US policy. And despite Karen Hughes’s characterization as “absurd” the idea that the US gave a green light to Israel, the whole of the Arab world – and lots of other nations -- believes it to be true.

That Israel was provoked by Hezbullah’s prolonged firing of Katyusha rockets into Northern Israel and, finally, its cross-border incursion and kidnap of IDF soldiers is not open to debate – it happened. Ask yourself how France would react to similar aggressive acts by, say, Germany. Or Canada lobbing rockets into New England.

Whether or not Israel “over-reacted” is now largely moot. If Hezbullah is left with the capability of firing a single Katyusha, it will claim victory – if for no other reason than that it stood up to the region’s premiere military for some weeks, perhaps months.

Israel can also be counted on to offer reasons to claim its own victory, though there is likely to be a protracted debate within Israel about the strategy of this military campaign. And since no subject is off limits in Israeli political dialogue, there may even be debate about whether Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, with the legacy of Ariel Sharon weighing heavily around his neck, felt the political need to demonstrate his own military machismo.

But the real winner in this game of smoke and mirrors will be neither Israel nor Hezbullah. The real winner will be Hezbullah’s principal sponsor, Iran. This is Tehran’s war. Hezbullah is a mere proxy.

What will Iran have won? Even if the United Nations can muster the support – and the troops -- to put a multinational force in place in Lebanon, Iran will have succeeded in distracting the world from resolution of its nuclear issue. The mere survival of Hezbullah will likely embolden Iran to continue its efforts to create a Shia “state” in the South of Iraq, and to continue to work to undermine any notion of unity there. And the world will have been further distracted from serious efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue -- that will please the Iranians and many other Arab governments who over many years have shown they would rather have an open wound than a doctor. Finally, while Sunni Hamas and Shia Hezbullah have not exactly been pals through the years, they could get a lot friendlier in the face of what they consider a common enemy – the US. To these parties, Israel is as much a proxy for America as Hezbullah is for Iran.

The US experience in Iraq has demonstrated the futility of attempting to defeat an armed insurgency militarily. Likewise, no matter how long Israel remains in Lebanon, it will never completely destroy Hezbullah. Given current attitudes in the Middle East, there will always be more Hezbullah recruits than there are Israeli shells.

And there will continue to be state actors happy to continue their covert support for such movements.

It would be simplistic to lay this mess at the feet of US foreign policy. But America does bear some responsibility. Preferring its “Axis of Evil” rhetoric to reality, it has chosen not to engage Iran. It has also shunned direct talks with Syria. Yet these countries are the two principal sources of physical and moral support for Hezbullah. Of equal consequence, the US has been largely AWOL on the Israeli-Palestinian issue for six years. Its love of elections brought Hamas to power in the Palestinian territories.

So, on that issue, if America hadn’t already completely lost its credibility as an honest broker, it has now.

The so-called International Community has also demonstrated its paralysis. Two years ago, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1559, demanding that Lebanon disarm militias like Hezbullah and assume complete control of all of its territory. That resolution placed Lebanon in a totally untenable position. Its armed forces are small, weak and heavily infiltrated by Hezbullah supporters. The UNIFIL force deployed to Lebanon was never mandated to enforce 1559 and, in any case, was never given the resources to do so. Syria was only too happy to fill that vacuum, thank you very much.

But most importantly, 1559 appeared to ignore Lebanon’s chief dilemma: Hezbullah’s role as a bona fide political party represented in the Parliament, with Ministers in the government, and with a growing constituency based on its ability to deliver the social and humanitarian services Lebanon’s government seemed incapable of providing. Both diplomats and the Western media conveniently suffered amnesia on these issues as they celebrated the Cedar Revolution.

Where was even the discussion of a multinational force then? Non-existent. As was any robust plan from the UN to help Lebanon achieve this virtually impossible goal. Pity is that there was widespread if quiet agreement that, given Lebanon’s divided government, Syria’s military presence, and Hezbullah’s growing popularity, any attempt by Lebanon to unilaterally disarm this “state within a state” would risk plunging Lebanon back into civil war.

Instead, a shattered Lebanon chose to concentrate on rebuilding itself after a generation of civil war. If the US had done half as well in Iraq, that quagmire might be looking a lot more hopeful now.

It will take Lebanon years to recover from the Israeli campaign, and exactly who will step forward to help remains problematic. Chances are that as long as the Katushas remain, the answer will be nobody.

President Bush claims he wants a resolution that will get at the root cause of the present mess. And he identifies the root cause as Hezbullah’s rockets and kidnappings.

But for most in the Middle East and other Muslim nations – states whose support we need now more than ever -- the root cause goes much further back than that -- to the establishment, with the UN’s blessing, to 1948, and the establishment of the State of Israel. Destroying Israel is high on the official agenda of Iran’s President Mahmud Ahmedinejad, and on the back-channel propaganda agendas of other Arab and Muslim states.

Disarming Hezbullah will not turn back the clock, and it is no long-term solution to the problems that beset the region, but it needs to happen. Every day it doesn’t happen means more death and destruction.

The unanswered question is: Who can make it happen? America’s green-lighting of Israel’s current Lebanon project – and the negative reaction to it by so many Arab and Western nations – leaves the US in a distressingly weakened state diplomatically. A byproduct of that sad truth is the Bush Administration’s sudden love affair with multilateralism. After six years of dissing the UN, the president and his secretary of state have, perhaps reluctantly, embraced their last remaining option.

In a best-case scenario, the UN will not only pass however many resolutions may be needed to stop the killing, but will pursue their implementation with the kind of energy too often absent from the world body.

But that will still leave many critical questions on the table: Will the US finally muster the resolve to sit down and talk directly with the Iranians and the Syrians? Can it regain the credibility to finally breathe some high-level consistency into the search for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine? And will it find the imagination to develop a sustainable strategy for success in Iraq?

In the end, talking may produce nothing. But it is better than killing.


















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SCREW UP, COLLECT REWARD

By William Fisher

Millions of us shook our heads in disbelief as President George W. Bush made a cottage industry of rewarding the undeserving.

The cast of characters is long and Orwellian.

There’s Jay Bybee, the Justice Department lawyer who famously wrote the “torture memo” whose twisted logic somehow blew off the Geneva Conventions and justified the interrogation techniques that brought us Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo. Dubya rewarded him with a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.

Nor was Bybee’s boss, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, to be ignored. He got his reward by getting elevated to be the Attorney General of the United States – “the people’s lawyer.”

Then came that breathtakingly Kafkaesque White House ceremony where the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was conferred on yet more deserving folks.

There was General Tommy Franks, whose shock and awe led our troops into Baghdad without a clue about what to do when we got there.

And Ambassador Jerry Bremer, who became America’s proconsul in Iraq and arguably created history’s most inappropriate, arrogant and inefficient bureaucracy – wasting billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and managing to create many of the conditions that have now brought that country to the brink of civil war.

Not to forget George (It’s a slam-dunk) Tenet, the CIA Director who told the President exactly what the Vice-President and his Iraq cabal wanted to hear about Saddam’s WMD stockpiles, yellowcake in Niger, aluminum tubes, and mushroom clouds.

And the rewarding of the undeserving goes on, the latest example being Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. (“Get dogs!”) Miller, the Guantánamo Bay commandant who helped organize interrogation centers in Afghanistan and at Abu Ghraib. An Army investigation recommended that Gen. Miller be reprimanded for his key role in “GITMO-izing” Iraqi prisons, but that recommendation was turned down by his commanding officer. Instead, Gen. Miller was able to retire honorably with the military’s highest non-combat medal -- the Distinguished Service Medal -- pinned to his chest following a ceremony in – wait for it! -- the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes. The medal is for “exceptionally meritorious service to the government” beyond the performance of duty.

Well, what’s done can’t be undone, no matter how embarrassing it may be to our nation. But if there’s even a remote possibility that the President wants to restore the honor of the Medal of Freedom, I have a couple of nominees for him to consider.

The first is Stuart W. Bowen Jr., our special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. Bowen, a Texas lawyer and longtime Bush loyalist – he spent 35 days in Florida during the 2000 presidential recount – was charged in 2004 with rooting out fraud, embezzlement and misappropriation of the billions Congress appropriated to rebuild Iraq.

He began his Congressionally-mandated work in Iraq under Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA, but could find few who were interested in what he was finding. Since the dissolution of the CPA, and Bremer’s departure from Iraq, he has found and reported to Congress evidence of millions of “missing” dollars, arrant over-charging and substandard performance – or non-performance -- by contractors, dazzling lack of oversight by American authorities both in Iraq and in the U.S., and pervasive corruption among Iraqi leaders. Many of his findings have been referred to the Justice Department and will likely result in criminal charges.

Bowen’s findings, reports and Congressional testimonies are not likely to win him many friends in the Bush Administration – but that’s exactly the point. He deserves to be honored not only for what he’s found, but because in reporting what he’s found, he has put the nation’s interest above his own.

My second nominee for President Bush’s consideration is the Controller General of the United States – a title virtually unknown outside the Beltway. His name is David M. Walker. Formerly a partner at Arthur Anderson, he was appointed to his 15-year term by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

The Comptroller General is the nation’s chief accountability officer and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a legislative branch agency founded in 1921. GAO’s mission is to help improve the performance and assure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.

In that role, Walker has led hundreds of objective, fact-based, non-partisan investigations into government waste, fraud, and abuse – and has found no shortage of subject matter. No agency or department in the Executive Branch has been immune from GAO’s scrutiny – including, most recently, such sacred cows as the Department of Homeland Security and its FEMA unit, and the Pentagon’s non-existent systems to manage and account for the billions in its bloated budget.

While Walker’s staff works with each agency it is examining, and solicits and publishes their objections to GAO findings and recommendations, most Executive Branch agencies quietly regard GAO as the enemy.

In a large majority of cases, the investigated department expresses agreement with GAO findings, says it’s “working on the problem” or promises to do so but, far too often, does little or nothing to correct it -- a situation exacerbated by the pitiful state of Congressional oversight.

Walker’s mission is not made any easier by the paranoid secrecy of the Bush Administration. Nonetheless, the GAO is one of the few public bodies mandated to disinfect with sunshine. For that, it deserves the nation’s gratitude.

So, Mr. President, if the real meaning of the Medal of Freedom is of any consequence to you, you might start restoring it by honoring these two genuine public servants.

We’ll be watching.

THE LIMITS OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER

By William Fisher

President George W. Bush's widespread use of so-called "signing statements" to unilaterally decide which parts of acts passed by Congress he will enforce continues to face mounting opposition as the practice came under sharp criticism from a blue-ribbon task force assembled by the nation's premier legal organization and a powerful member of the president's own party announced he will soon introduce legislation authorizing Congress to sue him in Federal Court.

"We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional," said Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.

Specter's announcement on the Senate floor coincided with the conclusion of a task force organized by the American Bar Association (ABA) that by attaching conditions to legislation, the president has sidestepped his constitutional duty to either sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.

In issuing a signing statement, "a sitting president reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on grounds of national security or the "inherent powers" the Constitution grants the chief executive in wartime. The statements are customarily issued - usually with little or no public disclosure -- immediately after a president has signed into law an act passed by Congress.

Specter's committee estimates the president has challenged some 750 statutes passed by Congress. The ABA estimates Bush has issued signing statements on more than 800 statutes, more than the combined number issued by all presidents in U.S. history.

But some critics say the lax oversight exercised by Congress is equally responsible for the breakdown in the separation of powers between the three co-equal branches of government. Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, told us, "Let's hope that Senator Specter's move represents an awakening Congress. Our legislators have been asleep on the job while the Executive has expanded its powers -- they are in a sense equally culpable for the reckless policies sent forth from Washington."

And Peter M. Shane, a professor at the University of Ohio Law School and a specialist in separation of powers, told us, "Because President Bush entertains the most radically expansive theory of presidential power in history, it is no accident that he has identified an unprecedented number of occasions on which he imagines Congress is threatening his prerogatives. Many of these are simply instances of routine congressional oversight. It is as if his copy of the Constitution somehow omitted the clause that explicitly authorizes Congress to issue laws that are 'necessary and proper' for carrying into execution even the constitutional authorities of the executive branch." Prof. Shane is co-author with Harold H. Bruff of "Separation of Powers Law: Cases and Materials" (Carolina Academic Press, 2005).

ABA President Michael Greco characterized signing statements as "non-vetoes" and charged that the practice "hamstrings Congress because Congress cannot respond to a signing statement." The practice, he added, "is harming the separation of powers."

Under the US Constitution, Congress alone is authorized to enact laws and the president is mandated to enforce them without change or modification. The current signing statement controversy erupted into public and congressional consciousness earlier this tear after Congress passed an extension of the USA Patriot Act and another measure forbidding the US from inflicting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to people detained in the "war on terror."

President Bush signed the acts into law, but then issued statements saying in effect he would not enforce the laws when doing so might jeopardize national security.

Signing statements are not new, having been used by many previous presidents. But past use has typically been for purposes such as congratulating congress on enacting measures or instructing agencies on how to execute new laws.

While the White House maintains that President Bush's signing statements are not intended to allow the administration to ignore the law, many of his statements declare his belief that parts of bills he is signing are unconstitutional.

The ABA panel described the practice as "a serious threat to the Constitution's system of checks and balances," and urged Congress to pass legislation permitting court review of such statements.

"The president is indicating that he will not either enforce part or the entirety of congressional bills," said ABA president Michael S. Greco, a Massachusetts attorney. "We will be close to a constitutional crisis if this issue, the president's use of signing statements, is left unchecked."

The 10-member ABA panel, chaired by prominent Miami attorney Neil Sonnett, includes at least three well-known conservatives or Republicans: former congressman Mickey Edwards, a Republican from Oklahoma, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) William S. Sessions, and a former Justice Department lawyer, Bruce Fein, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan. It also includes former appellate judge Patricia M. Wald, former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen M. Sullivan and Harvard law professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Their report will be considered by the full ABA next month.

Task Force members contend that President Bush has changed the nature of signing statements. It said that many of his objections are based on the idea that congressional checks on the presidential power are limited.

They said that if the president has constitutional problems with a bill, he should make his concern known to Congress before it enacts the legislation. Signing statements should not be a substitute for vetoing bills the president considers unconstitutional, the panel said.

"The President's constitutional duty is to enforce laws he has signed into being unless and until they are held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or a subordinate tribunal," panel members wrote. "The Constitution is not what the President says it is."

Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month to articulate the administration's position, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michelle E. Boardman denied that the president was trying to "cherry-pick" among the parts of a duly enacted law. "Presidential signing statements are, rather, a statement by the president explaining his interpretation of and responsibilities under the law," she said.

Whether the ABA report will influence the Bush administration is unclear, since many conservatives in the administration and in Congress believe that the ABA has a "liberal bias." In the early days of the Bush Administration, it ended the organization's role in evaluating judicial nominees.

Moreover, Bush has a number of conservative congressional allies in the signing statement issue. For example, Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and former judge, has said that signing statements are merely expressions of presidential opinion that carry no legal weight because federal courts are unlikely to consider them when deciding cases that challenge the same laws.

But Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA summed up the feelings of human rights advocates. She told us, "Signing statements must not be used to skirt the President's responsibilities under international law. Amnesty International was pleased with the passage of the anti-torture bill through Congress in December. However, that victory came with a new challenge, as President Bush, in signing the bill, issued a "signing statement" in which he asserted that he could waive the ban on torture and inhumane treatment when he deemed it necessary. Torture is never necessary. It is absolutely prohibited through international law and human rights standards, as well as the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights. The President of the United States is not above the law."

That may come as something of a shock to Mr. Bush.

WHILE BEIRUT BURNS

By William Fisher

As rockets rain down on Lebanon and Israel, and the world stares into the abyss of a catastrophic Middle East conflagration, it was comforting to note last week that members of Congress refused to get depressed about the scary state of world affairs.

Instead, they busied themselves by concentrating their attention on some of the really crucial domestic issues facing our nation.

Like a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage. Even though the Senate resoundingly rejected action on this dangerous “values issue” – and even President Bush couldn’t really work up much public enthusiasm for it – the House of Representatives persevered.

Or at least the God Squad wing of the Republican Party persevered.

"It's part of God's plan for the future of mankind," explained Rep. John Carter of Texas, while Rep. Bob Beauprez of Colorado found "the very hand of God" at work, adding, "We best not be messing with His plan." Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana weighed in with "It wasn't our idea, it was God's."

And Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, apparently fresh from a personal conversation with The Higher Power, told his colleagues, “I think God has spoken very clearly on this issue." The gynecologist-legislator referred critics to the Holy Scriptures.

But other House members evidently weren’t connected to Gingrey’s conference call. They defeated the measure, 236 to 187.

The truly religious were more successful in their effort to strip those pesky activist federal judges from ever hearing cases challenging the constitutionality of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. These so-called social conservatives approved the measure, 260 to167. It now faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

"We should not and cannot rewrite history to ignore our spiritual heritage,"
intoned Rep. Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican. "It surrounds us. It
cries out for our country to honor God."

Supporters argued that the "under God" phrase, added to the pledge in 1954, was intrinsic to the nation's heritage and traditions and must be shielded from
unelected judges. "This is an issue that clearly resonates to what we are about
as a country," said House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri.

Rep. Todd Akin, another Missourian and sponsor of the measure, said that denying a child the right to recite the pledge was a form of censorship. "We believe that there is a God who gives basic rights to all people and it is the job of the government to protect those rights."

Never mind those quaint notions of judicial independence and the rights of religious minorities.

From among the many ironies in the “under-God” debate came a cautionary note from conservative Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California. He said the effort to strip courts of authority could come back to haunt his fellow conservatives if liberals gain control of Congress in the future. Congress, for example, could then prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on a state's decision to ban guns.

Then there was the Mt. Soledad cross issue, to which learned authorities on foreign policy and geopolitics have devoted many hours.

The cross at issue is a concrete edifice that has stood on public land at the center of San Diego's Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial for more than 50 years. The American Civil Liberties Union, nemesis of social conservatism, has been challenging the constitutionality of the cross for more than twenty years.

In May, a US District Judge ordered San Diego to remove the cross by Aug. 2 or face fines of $5,000 a day. But Rep. Duncan Hunter of California – the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee who seems to moonlight as a spokesman for the haute cuisine and luxurious accommodations at Guantanamo Bay – came up with a solution. Congress would enact legislation transferring the cross from city management to the Federal government, which would designate it a Federal war memorial and thus prevent it from being removed.

"Removing this landmark would send a message to our nation's veterans that their service and sacrifice has gone unnoticed," Hunter said. "This is the wrong message, especially when so many of our brave men and women are committed to the operational theaters of the global war on terror."

What a no-brainer for Congress in an election year – an issue that wrapped religion inside patriotism inside the Global War on Terror.

Dutifully, 379 courageous members of the US House voted to approve Hunter’s legislation. Only 74 demurred.

Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, one of the groups that has defended the cross in court, said the overwhelming support for Hunter's bill demonstrates that "the liberal judges who support the ACLU’s anti-Christian agenda" are out of touch with America.

"No doubt, the ACLU will return to its liberal judges to try to undo, once again, the democratic process and the will of the people," Thompson said. "However, an effective coalition of veterans groups, political leaders and public-interest organizations is developing to stop them."

An identical bill has been introduced in the Senate by that stalwart champion of the Constitution, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, whose aim is to bring it to the Senate floor before the Congressional summer recess.

Needless to say, the White House strongly endorses Hunter’s legislation.

Meanwhile, over at the White House, President Bush followed through with his threat to issue the first veto of his administration: The stem cell bill passed by Congress to expand Federal funding for research on a greatly enlarged community of embryonic stem cells – cells due to be destroyed by fertility clinics as “medical waste.”

Self-styled religious conservatives pulled out all the stops to defeat this legislation before it got to Mr. Bush’s desk, but were defeated not so much by an agitated pro-choice lobby but by most of our most distinguished scientists and physicians.

When the religious right-wing is in full-throated opposition, it is highly effective in conveying the impression that it speaks for every religious soul. The white noise of its rhetoric tends to drown out all other points of view and maintains that other points of view don’t exist at all.

Not so. Thankfully, there are thousands of religious leaders who believe that it is right-wing fundamentalism that dishonors God and science. They are still less visible and a lot less well-funded than the James Dobsons and Tony Perkins’s of the world. But the more the Bush Administration continues to pander to what it still calls its base, the more these other voices grow both in numbers and in influence.

One of the most articulate of these voices is Rev. Tim Simpson, who heads a relatively new organization known as The Christian Alliance. What he had to say about President Bush’s stem cell veto is worth our attention.

The president’s use of his veto authority, Rev. Simpson said, “will result in the early deaths and unnecessary suffering of millions of Americans. It is one of the most stunning, irrational decisions of an administration with a reputation for such and the most telling piece of evidence yet that America is under the sway of theocrats whose obsession for ideological purity outweighs their concern for America's, and the world's, sick and dying.”

He continues: “The most illogical aspect of this debate is that the embryos which were to be used had the legislation passed will be thrown away! The twisted moral framework that would allow the embryos to be discarded rather than used to heal and save lives goes hand in glove with the pseudoscience that has become the hallmark of the Religious Right, to which this administration gives its highest loyalty.”

And he asks, “How long will Christians in this country stand for such outrages?”

Rev. Simpson tells the story of Jesus the Healer in Mark 6. “The text says that Jesus had compassion for the crowd because they were ‘like sheep without a shepherd’. Into the midst of the chaos of the people's lives, Jesus' compassion manifested itself in the healing of their bodies, as the crowds brought the sick to him to make them whole. Tens of thousands of American churches whose pastors follow the lectionary will hear this text this Lord's Day in congregations all across the country. How sad that this is to be the text in so-called Christian America, on the Sunday after the Christian President of the United States threw the sick under the bus. Talk about sheep without a shepherd.”

Rev. Simpson assures us, “This is not a partisan issue. There isn't a Democrat, Republican or Independent who doesn't know someone who is suffering from diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, paralysis or a host of other diseases and ailments that could be ameliorated or cured through the use of stem cell therapies. Forget the Red State-Blue State clash. Polls indicate that better than 7 out of 10 Americans approve of federal funding for stem cell research. Even someone as conservative as Bill Frist, anxious to help mainstream America forget his embarrassing role in the Terri Schiavo affair, demonstrated that even he had not taken complete leave of his senses by supporting the bill. But the President threw a sop to the radical fringe in his party, so the entire nation has to suffer.”

Throwing the sick under the bus is likely to be a big part of the “compassionate conservative” legacy of George W. Bush. And we will probably never know whether his veto was borne of genuine conviction, however misguided, or of Karl Rove’s need to mobilize his flock to get to the polls in November.

But November is not an opportunity only for Mr. Rove. It is a chance for the nation’s flock to show that it’s a lot smarter than our president and our craven Congress thinks it is.

Let us pray.