Do human remains belong in museums? According to at least some of the families of 9/11 victims from the Twin Towers, they most certainly do not. This weekend, protesters held up unequivocal signs stating this belief: "Human remains don't belong in museums." The family members were protesting the move of the unidentified 9/11 remains from the medical examiner's office to the newly-constructed memorial and museum on the Twin Towers site. The remains will continue to be tested in the hopes of positively identifying them at some point, and they will not be stored anywhere in public view. While the museum will have a $24 entrance fee, there will be a families-only "Reflection Room" which will not require paid admission for the families of the victims. As with virtually all actions surrounding the site, some of the 3,000 affected families agree with the decision and some -- vociferously -- do not.

Since I did not lose a family member on 9/11, though, I do not even feel qualified to take a personal position on the issue. I simply do not know how I would feel if those unidentified remains contained fragments of one of my own loved ones, to put this another way. So I do not write today to stake out a firm position on the movement of the 9/11 remains this weekend, just to be perfectly clear up front. I'd rather try to make a larger point on the shift in what is considered proper for museums to study and display.

Watching the protests and the heartfelt emotions displayed, I couldn't help wondering about this bigger picture. Because human remains are indeed fully and publicly displayed at many history museums. Beyond bones and skeletons, there are also many cultural artifacts on display in museums that were dug up from burial sites. Which made me wonder where, exactly, do we draw this line? Or, in much blunter language: what exactly is the difference between archaeology and grave robbing?

That's obviously a loaded question. "Grave robbing" usually means digging up a burial site and making off with anything saleable which can be found within. It implies wrongdoing, desecration, and profit. "Archaeology" is a scientific pursuit dedicated to discovering how previous humans lived their lives. The two, on first glance, might seem to be so disconnected that any attempted comparison between them would hold no validity whatsoever.

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OK, I fully admit I wrote that headline with the express purpose of putting two "Z" words next to each other, just because. I did (in my own defense) reject "Lazy-Crazy Benghazi Frenzy!" as too over-the-top, however.

Ahem. Where was I? Oh, right, last week's news....

Sarah Palin, for some reason, was in the news last week. No, really. Although, we have to say, the mighty have indeed fallen when this news consisted of an interview with the television show Extra, which exists solely because some folks find reading People magazine to be too intellectually challenging. Seems perfect for Palin, doesn't it?

Speaking of the shallow swamps of the superficial, the annual "let's mash-up Hollywood stars and Washington wonks" dinner party was held last week as well. Joel McHale did a pretty good job of roasting everyone, so check out the video if you missed it.

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The Republican Party's 2014 midterm election strategy was supposed to be simple, since it contained only one plank in the platform: the awfulness of Obamacare. This isn't mere supposition, as Republicans have been freely admitting this for over six months now. They were so sure of their strategy that they didn't even care if everyone knew what it was ahead of time. The midterms would be "all Obamacare, all the time" on the Republican side, and that would usher them into victory. They even convinced themselves to avoid tackling other issues (such as immigration) because doing so would be a distraction from the single-minded focus on Obamacare.

This week, however, the entire Republican Party seems to be in the midst of a gigantic political pivot. Attacking Obamacare seems to be on the wane, while dredging up old scandals seems to be more in vogue. Republicans seem to now be thinking that the midterms are going to be about Benghazi and the I.R.S. Their previous laser-like focus on Obamacare seems to be wavering, at the very least.

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Today's article title is meant as commentary on the media's overreactions to the first big round of primary election results (announced last night), and not any sort of supportive call to arms. Just to be clear up front, in case anyone was expecting a very different sort of article. It really should read "The Tea Party Is Dead / Long Live The Tea Party," since it represents a clear dichotomy in how pundits reacted to the primary results. Since the Tea Party candidates didn't do very well (and even that's putting it charitably) in this first big round of primaries, many are now proclaiming total victory for the Establishment Republican faction of the Republican Party, and an absolute rout of the Tea Party faction. The second way of interpreting the results warns that rumors of the Tea Party's death are premature, and that what really happened was that the Tea Party's takeover bid for the entire Republican Party is now a complete success. The Tea Party won, this way of thinking goes, because they have now become the Republican Party.

Which is it? Is the Tea Party dead? Or is it enjoying ever-increasing vigor because it has so successfully co-opted the Republican Party itself? The answers aren't really clear, mostly because the Tea Party itself is rather nebulous and hard to pin down (it always has been) and also because the Tea Party faction isn't really all that new in the Republican Party (although they do now have a catchy new name). There has been an intraparty feud between ultra-conservatives and merely-staunch-conservatives, after all, since at least the 1960s (see: Goldwater, Barry).

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I wrote the article below a little over a year ago. After the Supreme Court ruled this week on the constitutionality of Christian prayers opening public meetings, I thought it would be a good time to re-run this column. By doing so, I am dodging the issue of prayers' constitutionality and the recent 5-4 ruling, I realize. But others are adequately commenting on the case itself and its implications for the church/state divide, so I felt I really didn't have much original to say on the issue that hadn't already been said elsewhere.

Instead, I wanted to revisit the issue from a different angle. Because no matter what you think of Congress (or smaller governmental entities) opening their sessions with a prayer, I truly think that paying over a million dollars of taxpayer money each year to provide in-house chaplains is nothing short of lunacy. This is a perk unheard of in the private sector, after all, as even Christian businesses like Hobby Lobby don't provide a clergy member to their employees full-time, on the premises.

Paying handsome salaries for full-time religious officials in both houses of Congress is nothing short of an anachronism. Any member of Congress seeking spiritual guidance has many modern methods to communicate with the religious leaders of their choice, without taxpayers having to foot the bill for it. So while the argument rages over opening prayers, my question is a more practical one: why are we still paying these guys to morally instruct our legislators?

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Bouncing Back

After suffering a negative month in the polls in March, President Obama bounced back in April, gaining back all the ground he had lost and then some (well, "and then a little bit more" would be more accurate...). He still hasn't quite made it back to where his poll numbers were before the Obamacare website rollout, but if the trendlines continue in May, he is at least within reach of this goal for the first time since last October. Let's take a look at the updated chart, shall we?

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

April, 2014

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There was a lot of political news this week, most of it pretty good for Democrats. In the Senate, Democrats forced Republicans to filibuster a minimum wage bill (more on that in a bit), and then the week ended with some very good news in the unemployment numbers.

Some of us in the punditocracy have been predicting for a while now that the midterm races might not be as centered on Obamacare as the Republicans think it will -- that the improving economic news and which party is fighting for the middle class may be the real front-and-center issue during the campaign. It is now not outside the bounds of possibility that the unemployment figure could fall to below six percent before the election, which would certainly allow the Democrats to start playing a lot stronger offense, out on the hustings. While one month of really good news does not a trend make, we'll see if continued good employment news starts to shift the focus of the political conversation by summer or fall.

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There seems to be a quiet debate going on within Congress over the possibility of bringing back the practice of earmarks. Unusually, the debate doesn't seem to break down on strictly partisan lines (the way most issues do, these days). But it does raise a valid question: should some limited form of earmarks be allowed to return to the budgeting process? Would it be a good thing or a bad thing, overall?

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The head of the National Basketball Association is being praised for swiftly acting to ban an NBA team owner for life, after his private conversations were leaked in which he displayed unquestionable racism. That is indeed laudable, but it ignores the institutional racism which is still allowed within the National Football League and Major League Baseball. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just pointed this out (with regards to the NFL), on the floor of the Senate. But even Reid didn't go far enough. Consider the following outlandish scenario, if you will: the Clippers are forced to be sold to another owner. This new owner decides that the team name has been tainted beyond all repair, and decides to rename the team. He chooses the name "Blackskins," and comes up with a logo that closely resembles the Little Black Sambo caricature. What would the public say? Think everyone would agree that this was a good idea?

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I speak out today in support of a Tea Party candidate.

OK, I'll just wait while you pick yourself up off the floor, retrieve your dropped jaw, and put your eyeballs back in your head. So to speak. I sincerely hope I didn't cause anyone's monitor to be sprayed with coffee, either.

Sorry to begin with a bit of humor, but at heart this story is all about humor. Political humor, in specific. Because a humorous political ad just caused a candidate for office to get fired from his day job at a Christian university.

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