progressive involvement

Colorado Springs Gazette?

Yep:

Proposition 8 is bad law, and may not withstand judicial scrutiny. Adults who live as married couples are, in fact, married whether the majority likes it or not. Marriage is a contract between two people. The contract involves God and/or a church only if those two people choose to include a third party in the contract.

Signs of the times

LA Times:  The department-store chain Mervyns closed in October...Linens 'n Things Inc. and Shoe Pavilion Inc. launched going-out-of-business sales...Circuit City Stores Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

Scaling back, according to Cannonfire:  Wilsons leather, J.C. Penney, Lowes, Office Depot, Ethan Allen, Sprint, Pep Boys, Talbots, Pier 1, The Disney Store, Starbucks.

"Wave of bankruptcies," says the International Herald Tribune, citing Sharper Image, Domain, Wickes, Fortunoff, Harvey Electronics, and Lillian Vernon, and also that Foot Locker would close 140 stores, Ann Taylor will start to shutter 117 and the jeweler Zales will close 100.

Good choice

Pres.-elect Obama is not only reading books about Lincoln, but also FDR.

During his "60 Minutes" interview Sunday, the president-elect was asked if he had been reading anything about Roosevelt and the Depression.

Yes, he said. "There's a new book out about FDR's first 100 days. And what you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence and a willingness to try things and experiment in order to get people working again."

Turns out, according to his press office, there are two books on Roosevelt that Obama has been studying: "FDR," by Jean Edward Smith, published by Random House in 2007, and "The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope," by Jonathan Alter, published in 2006 by Simon & Schuster.

I've read the Alter book, and commend it for its insight and its writing.  I had regarded Alter as a political reporter, which is fine by itself, but was pleasantly surprised that he was able to uncork a book as good as The Defining Moment.

Confederate flag flies in Huntsville, Arkansas to protest election of Barack Obama

Says Gene Lyons:  The owners of the Faubus Hotel in Huntsville took down their American flag when Sen. Obama won the election, and replaced it with a Confederate flag.  (The Faubus Hotel, incidentally, is named for Gov. Orval Faubus who, back in the 1950's, called out the National Guard to prevent 9 black students from going to public high school.) 

That's not so odd, but the idea that the Confederate flag is a symbol of Christianity certainly comes as a surprise.  Local accountant, Steven Fowler, said the flag "is a symbol of Christianity first and foremost."  Not everyone in Huntsville agrees, including the local Methodist pastor who preached against it from the pulpit.

It’s the biggest debate to hit the Ozark Mountain town of about 2, 000 since a Huntsville High teacher killed a raccoon with a nail gun and skinned it during class last November, said the Madison County Record’s editor, Kyle Mooty.

Coleman clings to narrow lead over Franken

As of Friday, with 86% of the vote recounted, Norm Coleman has a 293 vote lead.  Since the beginning of the recount, Coleman has “lost” 1,846 votes versus Franken’s “lost” 1,923 votes.  Most of these are "lost" to challenges  (The Coleman people have challenged 2448 ballots to Franken’s 2292.)  This one will most likely be decided in court. 

Mormons investigated

Everyone knows that the Mormon church raised millions of dollars to try to defeat Proposition 8--gay marriage--in California.  Under the radar, they apparently also supplied phone banks and hundreds of volunteers, which, in violation of California law, they may have failed to report.  NY Times:

The complaint, filed by Fred Karger, founder of the group Californians Against Hate, asserted that the church’s reported contributions — about $5,000, according to state election filings — vastly underestimated its actual efforts in passing Proposition 8, which amended the state’s Constitution to recognize only male-female marriage.

Broadly speaking, California state law requires disclosure of any money spent or services provided to influence the outcome of an election.

Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker provides some perspective:

The original Latter-day Saint, Joseph Smith, acquired at least twenty-eight and perhaps sixty wives, some of them in their early teens, before he was lynched, in 1844, at age thirty-eight. Brigham Young, Smith’s immediate successor, was a bridegroom twenty times over, and his successors, along with much of the male Mormon élite, kept up the mass marrying until the nineteen-thirties—decades after the Church had officially disavowed polygamy, the price of Utah’s admission to the Union, in 1896.

President-elect Obama helps distribute food to the needy at St. Columbanus Church in Chicago

Full story at ABC News:  On Thanksgiving Eve, President-elect Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and his daughters Malia and Sasha, all bundled up in winter coats and hats, dished out chickens to the needy at a Chicago church, leaving some overcome with emotion.

"Very special," said one emotional man, crying as he described what it meant to meet Obama.

Photo:  AP, AFP and Getty

Martti Ahtisaari, Nobel Peace Prize Winner

The award was announced in October, and he will receive it on December 10 at the Oslo City Hall in Oslo, Norway. 

Martti Ahtisaari is the former President of Finland.  In 1990, Ahtisaar played "a key role in supporting the emergence of Namibia as a free and sovereign nation," said Ishmael Noko, the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation.

Ahtisaari was the UN special commissioner for Namibia in southern Africa from 1977 to 2001.  He was also a UN special envoy for Kosovo, the predominantly ethnic Albanian province of Serbia.  He has also been active in seeking peaceful resolutions to conflicts in Iraq, Northern Ireland, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa.

Pope backing away from interfaith dialogue?

Marcello Pera, an Italian center-right politician, has written a book arguing that Europe should return to its Christian roots.  In a letter to Pera, probably helping him to promote his book, Pope Benedict wrote that dialogue with other religions is "not possible."  Theologically, "a true dialogue is not possible without putting one's faith in parentheses."

I know thousands of people who engage in inter-religious dialogue without putting their faith in parentheses.  In no way is this forgetting one's faith, or setting it aside (inside parentheses).  Interfaith dialogue is, first and foremost, about civility, which means treating others with consideration and respect whether you agree with them or not. 

But Benedict added that “intercultural dialogue which deepens the cultural consequences of basic religious ideas” was important. He called for confronting “in a public forum the cultural consequences of basic religious decisions.”

It is difficult to know what such a comment means, especially when the Vatican's own actions are somewhat at odds with these words.  Pope Benedict has been involved with several interfaith dialogues, the most recent being with Muslim leaders just last month.

My guess is that Benedict was wanting to promote Mr. Pera's book since the book, titled "Why We Must Call Ourselves Christian," is an extended argument on behalf of one of Pope Benedict's major priorities, which is the re-evangelization of Europe.

There's no delusion like self-delusion

After bemoaning that Pres.-elect Obama may turn out not to be the Knight in Shining Armor of High Liberalism, William Greider laments, correctly:  "Those of us who expected more were duped, not so much by Obama but by our own wishful thinking."

Correct-amundo.  I never could understand how the High Liberals thought then Sen. Obama was all that liberal to begin with.  His actual record on progressive issues is virtually identical to Hillary Clinton's, and much shorter in length. 

So yes, it was "wishful thinking."  Candidate Obama was a tabula rasa onto which the High Left wrote their own aspirations and fantasies.  He's black, he's cool--(as are we)--and he must be liberal too!  They mistook their own projections for reality. 

In fact, Barack Obama has been mostly a centrist politician, with the occasional liberal impulse, all along.  To the extent that he has a legislative record, he's been more a coalition-builder than a crusader.

Personally, unlike Greider, I give Pres.-elect Obama high marks on the transition.  His appointments so far have been generally centrist, but also stellar--people with whom you might not always agree, but people who at least know something about what they're supposed to be doing.

Would I like to see a little more ardent progressive fervor?  Yes, I suppose--in some areas at least, and he may well get there before it's all over.  But did I expect it?  No.  Based on the Obama record, there was no reason to.