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While technically true ("job growth" is not the same thing as the unemployment rate), but that last sentence could also have been written as: "the unemployment rate fell at the fastest rate in over fifty years -- since 1958, to be exact." Both are true, and yet they tell very different stories -- "a grim nine percent" versus "fell at the fastest rate in over fifty years."
Phelps knows how to manipulate all of these categories, as he's been at his hatemongering for quite a while now, which has involved previous legal disputes. He has his own church, for instance, which cloaks (as far as he's concerned) everything he says as "religious speech." To back this up, he also knows that "political speech" is protected speech as well. Phelps himself used to be a lawyer (he has been disbarred) who took on civil rights cases, so he knows the legal landscape.
Sometimes it is hard to come up with a metaphor to describe the week that was. This was not one of those weeks.
The newly-Republican House of Representatives is going to start off their tenure with a gimmick. Or, to be slightly more charitable, a bit of political theater. They're going to read the entire United States Constitution on the floor of the House, as a sop to the Tea Party Republicans. Their aim is twofold -- to appease the Tea Party Republican faction, right from the get-go; and to provide stirring video clips of Republicans faithfully reading our country's founding document. There's one problem with this second goal, though: who gets to read the uncomfortable bits?
Both houses of Congress have now passed the bill which repeals the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (DADT), which did not allow gay Americans to openly serve their country in military uniform. President Obama has scheduled a signing ceremony for the repeal bill this Wednesday. While this is a significant achievement on the civil rights/gay rights front, it is also a significant political achievement. And one man stands out as the driving political force behind the successful effort to repeal this discriminatory federal policy. Which is why, today, I'd like to publicly thank Senator Joe Lieberman.
My apologies to anyone tuning in who was expecting to see the 150th "Friday Talking Points" column, since it will be pre-empted for two weeks here. But the good news is we're doing so to bring you our annual "McLaughlin Awards," which are even more fun!
The House of Representatives has just voted overwhelmingly to repeal the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (DADT), which forbids gays from openly serving their country. The vote was an impressive 250 to 175 -- which is sixteen more votes for repeal than the previous tally in the House (when they voted on the issue as part of the Pentagon's yearly budget). What this vote means is that we are now only one Senate floor vote and a presidential signing ceremony away from a historic end to such blatant discrimination being enshrined in federal law. Whether the Senate will pass the measure before the end of the year or not is still uncertain, but even with the down-to-the-wire nature of the lame duck session, this still represents the best chance for DADT's repeal yet -- and also the last chance for what could be a very long time to repeal the policy by legislative means.
A theme has emerged, in recent years, of America as a nation almost hopelessly divided, politically. This theme is most often reinforced by such superlative declarations (by "journalists" who really should know better) as "America is more politically divided than ever," or "this is the most politically polarized Washington has ever been," or similar such alarmist rhetoric. It has even gotten to the point where many see such statements as truisms -- statements so obviously true that they are seen as irrefutable. This is a gross error, born of the fact that most "journalists" simply have no concept of their own country's history. Because while we are indeed currently politically divided and somewhat polarized, this is actually our normal state as a nation -- and on the polarization scale, we're nowhere near the "most divided" we've ever been. Far from it.
When ex-actor Ronald Reagan won the presidency for the first time, I became convinced that American politics had become indistinguishable from show business. Nothing that has happened in the intervening years has caused me to change my mind on the subject. But the phenomenon of television personalities throwing their own pseudo-political "rallies" on the National Mall in Washington certainly breaks new ground in both the political arena and the entertainment world, I have to admit.
I'm going to (mostly) resist the urge to take advantage of this column's volume number in order to write a really gross column. Numerically, and inventory-wise, a "gross" is (of course) one dozen dozen. Twelve squared.