Well, yet another ConservaDem senator has decided to call it quits:

Sen. Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat prominently mentioned in connection with the White House in recent years, is ready to announce he won't seek re-election, saying he's fed up with Congress.

"To put it in the words most Hoosiers can understand: I love working for the people of Indiana, I love helping our citizens make the most of their lives, but I do not love Congress," Bayh said in comments prepared for an announcement later Monday in Indianapolis. His statement was obtained by The Associated Press from a Democratic official who declined to be named publicly.

Bayh's departure continues a recent exodus from Congress among both Democrats and Republicans, including veteran Democrats Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Patrick Kennedy of Mass. The announcements have sprung up in rapid-fire fashion amid polls showing a rising anti-incumbent fervor and voter anger over Washington partisanship, high unemployment, federal deficits and lucrative banking industry bonuses.

The analysis, of course, was that this represented a big pickup opportunity for Republicans:

Sen. Evan Bayh's exit gives Republicans a prime pick-up opportunity. Former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats (R) is running for the seat. Bayh was leading Coats by 20 points (55% to 35%) in a recent Research 2000/DailyKos poll.

Republicans now have Senate pick-up opportunities in at least eight states -- Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, and North Dakota.

To take back control of the Senate, Republicans will need to gain a net of 10 seats.

Democrats have pick-up opportunities in at least three states -- New Hampshire, Ohio, and Missouri.

Democrats have been hammering Coats for his residence, his lobbying and more. And a Democratic official says Bayh was ahead.

"They polled last week and were way ahead of Coats," the official said, adding that petitions were due tomorrow and the Bayh campaign's "were all done."

The decision "must have been a last minute, personal decision."

As for who could run to replace Bayh, look to Reps. Brad Ellsworth and Baron Hill. Democrats are working to convince either -- both of whom represent swing districts in the Southern part of the state. Ellsworth, the former Vanderburgh County sherriff, is seen by some observers as, potentially, the strongest Democratic candidate. Hill is a former Indiana high school basketball star.

Also, look to see if Rep. Mike Pence on the Republican side reverses course and decides to jump into the race now.

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Bishop Thomas Tobin, the fellow who decided that abortion-tolerant Catholics like Rep. Patrick Kennedy should be denied the right to partake of Communion ceremonies, went on The O'Reilly Factor last night to try to answer his critics.

In the process, all he did was make it look like the anti-Catholic bigots of yore were right after all.

Tobin's arguments were not exactly convincing. When O'Reilly asked Tobin why it's OK to deny Communion to politicians who are pro-choice but not to Catholics who are pro-death-penalty, Tobin answered with a flimsy argument that amounted to nothing more than theological lawyering, evading the core issue that both are core matters of Catholic beliefs pertaining to "defending the values of life."

And when O'Reilly pointed out that, for people like Kennedy and Sen. John Kerry, it's a matter of democratic principle to separate their personal religious beliefs about abortion from the conduct of their policy, Tobin replied that opposing abortion rights is a matter of "defending your faith."

What people like Tobin refuse to acknowledge is that their belief that abortion is murder, based on the belief that life begins at conception, is fundamentally a religious belief that is not shared by many other Americans, especially those who take a more strictly biological view of the process.

So in denying any American the right to an abortion, anti-abortion politicians are fundamentally shoving their religious beliefs down the throats of everyone else. That's not "defending your faith", it's forcing it upon everyone else. Which is what that whole First Amendment thing about church and state was bout.

Wiser politicians, like Kennedy and Kerry and many others, recognize that this is fundamentally an anti-democratic, anti-First Amendment, and anti-American, way of doing things.

Guys like Tobin? They just make living caricatures of themselves -- people who are the living incarnation of the "Papists" who it was at one time imagined were trying to take over the country so that America would be run by fiat from the Vatican.

Back when anti-Catholic bigotry was much more common in America, it was one of their articles of faith that Catholic politicians were always going to be forced to do the bidding of the Vatican, and to have ultimate loyalty not to the Constitution but to the Church and its edicts.

The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, for instance, was particularly and viciously anti-Catholic. Its magazines and books -- including Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty and The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy -- were largely anti-Catholic tracts warning of the dire consequences of "Papist" influence on the political system.

This anti-Catholicism spread into other areas as well, including education. The Klan's anti-Catholic propaganda campaign led to the formation of groups targeting private and parochial schools on anti-Catholic grounds, including the National League for the Protection of American Institutions, which fomented to "protect" the public schools from Catholic ideology.

Remember Al Smith?

Smith was the first Catholic to win a major-party presidential nomination.... Smith’s Catholic beliefs played a key role in his loss of the Election of 1928. Many feared that he would answer to the pope and not the constitution. The people also criticized him for being a drunkard because of the stereotypes placed on Irish Catholics of the day.

The belief that Catholics would be forced to heel to the demands of the Vatican -- that they would essentially be puppets of the Church -- was finally blunted by John F. Kennedy in 1960:

A key factor that hurt John F. Kennedy in his 1960 campaign for the presidency of the United States was the widespread prejudice against his Roman Catholic religion; some Protestants believed that, if he were elected President, Kennedy would have to take orders from the Pope in Rome. To address fears that his Roman Catholicism would impact his decision-making, John F. Kennedy famously told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, "I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me." He promised to respect the separation of church and state and not to allow Catholic officials to dictate public policy to him. Kennedy also raised the question of whether one-quarter of Americans were relegated to second-class citizenship just because they were Roman Catholic. Even so, it was widely believed after the election that Kennedy lost some heavily Protestant states because of his Catholicism.

Kennedy went on to win the national popular vote over Richard Nixon by just one tenth of one percentage point (0.1%) - the closest popular-vote margin of the 20th century. In the electoral college, Kennedy's victory was larger, as he took 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219 (269 were needed to win). The New York Times, summarizing the discussion late in November, spoke of a “narrow consensus” among the experts that Kennedy had won more than he lost as a result of his Catholicism, as Northern Catholics flocked to Kennedy because of attacks on his religion.

Now, ironically, the Church itself is turning on another Kennedy and acting as though it expects total political obeisance to Vatican edicts -- in other words, making the anti-Papist bigots look as though they are right.

Fortunately, that younger Kennedy is around to continue to prove them wrong.

Rocked by sex and pedophilia scandals, the Catholic church has been losing members by the millions. In light of all that, the church continues to push its way backward in time and pushing it's pro-life members further away -- case in point, Congressman Patrick Kennedy's denial of communion by Bishop Thomas Tobin.

Of course, what Tobin and others within the church don't want to bring to light is the fact that they are still protecting accused pedophiles and sex offenders. After the Kennedy story came to light, some brave church victims have stepped up to make their voices heard. From the AP:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters said Tuesday that Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop is not doing enough to protect children from pedophile priests even as he's taken on Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy for his stance on abortion rights.

A small group of protesters gathered outside Bishop Thomas Tobin's office in Providence two days after news broke that the bishop had asked Kennedy in 2007 not to take Holy Communion because he supports abortion rights.

"He claims that it's important that we protect the unborn. But it's equally as important to protect those who have been born and those young children who have been raped and sodomized by clerics and priests. But yet he seems to protect those clerics," said Ruth Moore, of Hull, Mass.

The group called on Tobin to publish the names of priests from the diocese who have been convicted of or admitted molesting children, or if a thorough investigation has turned up credible evidence of child molestation, even if no conviction resulted. Read on...

As Randi Rhodes always says -- Love the fetus, hate the child.

In a breathtakingly tight argument, Chris Matthews corners Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin, who has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., from receiving Holy Communion due to his views on abortion.

Because here's the moral hypocrisy at the heart of the Church's abortion position: If it's really and truly murder, you're talking about prosecuting mothers, sisters, lovers and friends for having them. Tweety is quite aggressive with the bishop, demanding to know exactly what legal penalties he thinks should be legislated.

I mean, we won't even touch the concept of one religion imposing its moral position on everyone else. We don't have to. Because if you're saying abortion is murder, you may not create a separate class of penalties under the law. You can't argue that women "didn't know what they were doing." You can't say they were "confused" or "coerced" if there's no evidence they were, anymore than you can say that about any other murder for hire. Either she paid someone to murder her child - or she didn't.

So she has to be tried for murder. The churches can't have it both ways. They can't advise forgiveness and legal exemption for one specific class of murders.

And there's no way the majority of Americans would ever support sending their relatives, neighbors and friends to prison for it.

This is really what Tweety was getting at, and it was damned brilliant. Go, Tweety!

I'm going to address this new ruling about the death penalty for pedophiles in another post, but Yahoo News, the AFP and Fanny Carrier need to issue a correction and an apology to Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) immediately. They linked his bio and voting record to a man who has the same name---and is sentenced to death for rape of a minor.

The only man among more than 3,300 prisoners on death row who stands to lose his life under the new law is 42-year-old Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), who was sentenced to death in Louisiana in 2003 for raping his companion's eight-year-old daughter.

C&L's own Mark Groubert saw this last night and passed it on to me. This is outrageous. I doubt the Democratic Congressman knows about this, but now it'll be all over the Internet. A common criticism about bloggers I hear from the MSM is that we don't have editors monitoring our work. Ummm...Screen grabs below the fold.

Continue reading »

(Continuing the discussion by CSPANJunkie and Susie Madrak)

Candy Crowley at CNN has to be called out for a special mark of shame as she suggests that one "could argue one way or the other" as to whether the House of Representative's debate on the US government's need to remain in Afghanistan is as important a story to cover as the Eric Massa scandal. This comment came about because Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) criticized the lack of media coverage during a recent debate in the House regarding a resolution to pull out of Afghanistan. The resolution failed, but that's not the point. It's beyond shameful that a CNN reporter of Crowley's stature would even think that chasing a political sex scandal (which happens now, what, every other month?) is anywhere near the level of importance compared to Congress actually debating the future role of US forces in the Middle East.

I liked Kennedy's impassioned speech (at the first link):

And make no mistake about it, this isn't about national security. Because if it's about national security, it's about whether we put our treasure and our lives on the line in Afghanistan, or whether we put it in Kuwait, or whether we put it in the Sudan, or whether we put it in some other place in the world.

All of which is where we need it. Where do we need it the most? That should be the question. Because we don't have the resources to put it everywhere. So don't come and tell me "our national security requires [us to be] in Afghanistan." Because that's not the only place we need it. The question is, where our priorities should be. And you take it from one place, you got to put it somewhere else.

I've heard Andrew Bacevich make a similar speech, and it's right on target. Okay, so Kennedy got a little excited during his speech. He's a young guy, he'll get better 16-year veteran of the House and leaving soon. But this gives me the excuse to link to this great InkSpot post about a debate between Paul Pillar and John Nagl about the future of US forces in Afghanistan, in particular to address the issue of counterterrorism. Says Pillar:

It would be fruitless to search the contours of current international terrorism for a compelling explanation of why the United States is escalating a military campaign in Afghanistan. Clearly there is a disconnect between where war is being waged and where terrorism is rearing its ugly head. The appropriate response is not to run off, guns blazing, to find new battlefields, be they in Yemen or anywhere else. The U.S. military, pressing the limits of sustainability and winding up one war while slowly winding down another, does not have the resources to open a new front in every territory that may become associated with terrorism. There is no shortage of such places.

Regardless of the available resources, it is a mistake to think of counterterrorism primarily, as Americans have become wont to do, as the application of military force to particular pieces of real estate. This pattern of thinking is rooted in a history in which the vanquishing of threats to U.S. security has consisted chiefly of armed expeditions to conquer or liberate foreign territory. The pattern has been exacerbated by the unfortunate “war on terror” terminology, which confuses and conflates the seriousness of, the nature of and the means used to counter the threat.

The strength of a terrorist adversary, al-Qaeda or any other, does not correlate with control of a piece of territory in Afghanistan or elsewhere. If a terrorist group has a physical safe haven available, it will use it. But of all the assets that make a group a threat—including ideological appeal and a supply of already-radicalized recruits—occupation of acreage is one of the least important. Past terrorist attacks, including 9/11 (most of the preparations for which took place in scattered locations in the West), demonstrate this.

That last paragraph, in particular, is important. Military operations aimed at nation-building, no matter how successful, are not going to stop continued operations by transnational terrorists because they have no state. In this day and age of global economics, global information flow, global transportation, it's beyond stupid to stubbornly stick to the notion that "if we fail in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will flourish." They're already flourishing, adapting, moving around. They don't need Afghanistan as a base of operations, it's actually their training ground.

It's great to hear that there are people in Congress willing to have this debate, because (in theory at least) Congress is supposed to oversee the responsible funding of defense issues. Rep. Kennedy and Paul Pillar represent the views that I wanted President Obama to share, but of course, there are too many chickenshit Democrats out there who are afraid to make the right decisions out of fear that the Republicans will call them out as "weak on security." But to come full circle, I have even less respect for the national media - and CNN in particular - for their ambulance-chasing, sex-scandal stories having priority over issues of national importance.