Wednesday’s column by Maureen Dowd, eviscerating President Obama for his shabby treatment of former White House Counsel Greg Craig and supporter Caroline Kennedy, is getting favorable responses from his supporters in the blogosphere.

Only a year after he had helped Barack Obama get elected by eviscerating his close friend, Clinton White House colleague and Yale Law School classmate, Hillary Clinton, Craig was himself eviscerated by the Obama inner circle.

[...]

I often wondered if Craig and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, the other former Clinton official who helped undermine Hillary’s foreign policy record, would have done so if they had known that after turning on Hillary they would once more end up working beside her; if they had known that Obama can often be more interested in wooing opponents than tending to those who put themselves on the line for him.

There were complaints that Craig was out of the loop, but couldn’t Obama have walked the single West Wing staircase up to his counsel’s office and looped him in?

Craig was, after all, simply defending positions that Obama himself took during the campaign, from closing Gitmo to greater transparency.

The way the Craig matter was handled sent a chill through some Obama supporters, reminding them of the icy manner in which the Clintons cut loose Kimba Wood and Lani Guinier. But then, Obama is surrounded by many old Clinton hands (and a Clinton).

[...]

Although a handful of donors were invited to the premiere state dinner Tuesday night — as well as erstwhile allies Craig and Hillary — many donors and passionate supporters are let down by Obama’s detachment, puzzled at his failure to make them feel invested when he’s certain to come back to tap their well soon enough.

It is especially puzzling given that Obama faces tough midterms and a less-than-certain re-election — and given that we all now know someone on the unemployment line. (A new poll shows Obama and Sarah Palin neck and neck among independents, but then it is a Fox survey.)

Bill Clinton may not have cared any more about contributors than Obama does, but he was such a talented politician that he made them feel as though they were in “a warm bath,” as one put it.

Obama is more like a cold shower.

Steve Clemons, himself treated to Obama’s dismissiveness after serving as an advisor during the campaign, says the piece “shows why she is such a key part of high quality political journalism” by “pushing the Obama administration in the way stand up journalists should” even if it means being cut out of the loop.

M.J. Rosenberg remains “Obama supporter who has no regrets whatsoever about supporting him in the primaries and the general last year.”  But he’s nonetheless “disappointed in the people advising him and think a staff shakeup is overdo, starting with the Cabinet and working right down to the White House staff.”  Why, “If I wanted Team Clinton back, I’d have supported Hillary. Instead (as Hillary predicted) we have the same operator/operatives that Bill hired and Hillary would have hired had she been elected.”

The most interesting response is from Andrew Sullivan, both a fierce Obama supporter and yet one who both disagrees with him on several key issues and approaches politics with much more passion.

Dowd’s instincts about human character are foolish to bet against. She has essentially read every recent president correctly from the get-go as types. And she has always seen Obama as a bit of a cold fish, aloof, too unwilling to punch back, too arrogant to explain himself too much.

[...]

You see this in the almost clinical way Obama has assessed the politics of taking on the Bush administration’s interrogation, detention and rendition policies. The way in which both Greg Craig and Phil Carter have been dispatched for insisting that Obama live up to his campaign promises (no, I don’t believe the personal reasons line) is chilling in its raw political calculation. Ditto Obama’s disciplined refusal to fulfill his campaign pledges on civil rights any time soon. And his rhetorical restraint during the Green Revolution. The determination to figure out the very best and most detailed way forward in Afghanistan, even during a war in which allies are waiting and enemies are watching, and to take his time … well this is also a sign that we are dealing with one very, very cool character here.

Since I’ve always had a soft spot for cold fish in realpolitik – which high Tory (pun fully intended) doesn’t get a frisson from Bismarck or Kissinger? – this impresses me. Since I’m also a red-blooded Irishman, eager for a fight and a little romantic about my ideals, this also angers me at times.

[...]

In all this, Obama reminds me of George H W Bush in government, and of Ronald Reagan in campaigning. It’s a dream combo in many ways. In theory. It’s the practice thing that we’re beginning to test. My sense remains the same as in the campaign. He’s got this.

Interestingly, while I’m the reverse of Sullivan at the outset — I strongly opposed Obama’s election, can’t imagine voting for his re-election, and tend to be more detached in my political analysis — I think he’s on the right track here.

Some months back, I had and interesting conversation with Dave Schuler about this very thing on our OTB Radio podcast.   We both agreed that Obama showed an amazingly quick trigger in dumping allies who were politically inconvenient.  From Jeremiah Wright or Samantha Power or Bill Richardson or Tom Daschle, he didn’t hesitate to cut the cord rather than have them drag him down.   While I found this quality distasteful, Dave found it a necessary quality of effective leadership.

We were both right.

As much as I admired Obama’s predecessor for his loyalty to his people — indeed, he valued loyalty above almost all else in choosing them — it no doubt was a major factor in sinking his presidency.  He’d have undoubtedly been more successful had he more quickly dispatched Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Brown, and others.  Had he sacrificing them, he would have distanced himself from unpopular policies and been able to move on.

Sully’s right that there’s a danger that Obama’s aloofness will result in his base being less energized than it was in 2008.  But, frankly, unless he’s running against Sarah Palin, that’s going to be the case, anyway.  He’s not running against the backdrop of an incredibly unpopular incumbent nor is he vying to make history.  And he’ll have four years of decisions weighing him down, so there won’t be as much Hope or Change in the air.    But I agree with Andrew that Obama has to be considered the odds-on favorite unless we still have double digit unemployment in 2012.

Remember the bizarre case of Bill Sparkman, the census worker found hanging from a tree in Kentucky with the letters FED scrawled on his chest?  Remember the media frenzy about crazy Southerners and their hatred of the federal government?  At the time, I cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying there could be any number of explanations.  I also agreed with Andrew Sullivan that suicide was unlikely given what we then knew about Sparkman.

Well, it turns out, the unlikely explanation was the right one.

A Kentucky census worker found naked, bound with duct tape and hanging from a tree with “fed” scrawled on his chest killed himself but staged his death to make it look like a homicide, authorities said Tuesday.

Bill Sparkman, 51, was found strangled Sept. 12 with a rope around his neck near a cemetery in a heavily wooded area of the Daniel Boone National Forest in southeastern Kentucky. Authorities said his wrists were loosely bound, his glasses were taped to his head and he was gagged.

Kentucky State Police Capt. Lisa Rudzinski said an analysis found that “fed” was written “from the bottom up.” He was touching the ground, and to survive “all Mr. Sparkman had to do at any time was stand up,” she said. Authorities said Sparkman was not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol at the time of his death. His clothes were found in the bed of his nearby pickup. “Our investigation, based on evidence and witness testimony, has concluded that Mr. Sparkman died during an intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide,” Rudzinski said.

[...]

Authorities said Sparkman alone manipulated the suicide scene, which was so elaborate that a man who discovered the body was convinced Sparkman was murdered.

Rudzinski said Sparkman “told a credible witness that he planned to commit suicide and provided details on how and when.” Authorities wouldn’t say who Sparkman told of his plan, but said Sparkman talked about it a week before his suicide and the person did not take him seriously. He told the person he believed his lymphoma, which he had previously been treated for, had recurred, police said.

Sparkman also had recently taken out two accidental life insurance policies totaling $600,000 that would not pay out for suicide, authorities said. One policy was taken out in late 2008; the other in May. If Sparkman had been killed on the job, his family also would have been be eligible for up to $10,000 in death gratuity payments from the government.

Michelle Malkin wonders, “When will the Left retract the Kentucky census worker case smear against conservatives?”  Stacy McCain piles on:

Bill Sparkman committed suicide. So much for “Southern populist terrorism” — and the credibility of Andrew Sullivan. So much for “Send the body to Glenn Beck” — and the credibility of Rick Ungar.

But at least some on the Left are quickly getting the word out.  Zachary Roth at TPM writes, “Sparkman deliberately played on rural Kentucky’s reputation as a hotbed of anti-government sentiment to create the impression that he had been murdered because of his job.”  TLOOG’s Mark Thompson adds,

After all the speculation that the death of a census worker was fueled by anti-government extremismand how the Tea Party movement (whatever its faults) was a vanguard for a violent anti-government uprising, it now appears that the killing was a suicide made to look like a homicide so the man’s family could collect a substantial life insurance payout.  This is a saddening portrait of a deeply troubled man in deeply troubled times. It is not, however, evidence that anti-government activists are uniquely violent.

When information is scant, we tend to fill in the gaps based on our prejudices about how the world works.  On the whole, it’s a completely reasonable thing to do.  Indeed, the nature of wisdom is the ability to extrapolate from what we’ve learned.   But sometimes jumping to conclusions bites you in the ass.

Story links: memeorandum

White elites, shockingly, seem to enjoy cities where the culture is dominated by white elites. Aaron Renn breaks the news.

Among the media, academia and within planning circles, there’s a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and mid-sized cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, and Denver. In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture, and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as “cool” urban places.

But look closely at these exemplars and a curious fact emerges. If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.

In fact, not one of these “progressive” cities even reaches the national average for African American percentage population in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group.

He’s even got a handy dandy chart:

Not noted in the article but worth mentioning in this context: The “African Americans” in Minneapolis are mostly Africans, not Americans. There’s a huge Somali refuge population as a function of rather recent public policy decisions.

This raises troubling questions about these cities. Why is it that progressivism in smaller metros is so often associated with low numbers of African Americans? Can you have a progressive city properly so-called with only a disproportionate handful of African Americans in it? In addition, why has no one called these cities on it?

What is it that these cities are supposed to do? Send out advertisements for more blacks to move there?! Our black population is concentrated in the Deep South, for obvious reasons, and in a handful of urban centers that were built around industrial jobs and therefore encouraged a huge migration.

As the college educated flock to these progressive El Dorados, many factors are cited as reasons: transit systems, density, bike lanes, walkable communities, robust art and cultural scenes. But another way to look at it is simply as White Flight writ large. Why move to the suburbs of your stodgy Midwest city to escape African Americans and get criticized for it when you can move to Portland and actually be praised as progressive, urban and hip? Many of the policies of Portland are not that dissimilar from those of upscale suburbs in their effects. Urban growth boundaries and other mechanisms raise land prices and render housing less affordable exactly the same as large lot zoning and building codes that mandate brick and other expensive materials do. They both contribute to reducing housing affordability for historically disadvantaged communities. Just like the most exclusive suburbs.

Now, I live in the Washington, DC area, which is incredibly diverse in terms of both a large black population and a much higher international immigrant population than the national average. I’ve got no dog in this fight. But it strikes me as silly to attribute predominantly racial motivation for moving to these cities. People go there for good jobs and quality of life.

In comparison to the great cities of the Rust Belt, the Northeast, California and Texas, these cities have relatively homogenous populations. Lack of diversity in culture makes it far easier to implement “progressive” policies that cater to populations with similar values; much the same can be seen in such celebrated urban model cultures in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Their relative wealth also leads to a natural adoption of the default strategy of the upscale suburb: the nicest stuff for the people with the most money. It is much more difficult when you have more racially and economically diverse populations with different needs, interests, and desires to reconcile.

Right. And who wants more difficult problems to reconcile?

Even Matt Yglesias finds this argument “slightly odd.” For one thing, he correctly notes that number of blacks isn’t the only measure of diversity. Austin, for example, is less white than the country as a whole, with the diversity mostly added by Hispanics. And Renn goes to great lengths to dismiss foreign immigrants, which most of these cities have in great abundance, as a proper measure of diversity since they tend to be more affluent than inner city blacks.

But to take what I think is the ray of truth here, if you take a place that’s under-invested for decades in walkable urbanism and then create a bit of walkable urbanism the tendency is for that bit to become very expensive. And since African-American households have lower incomes and substantially less wealth than white households, the tendency is for the walkable urban places to become white. But to raise this as an objection to building walkable urbanism is like saying that we shouldn’t try to have great public schools, because poor people might not be able to afford to live near them. That’s totally backwards—the inability of poor people to afford to live in good school districts highlights the need for more good educational opportunities not fewer. By the same token, if investments in walkable urbanism cause prices to shoot up and price people out of the area that shows that we need more walkable urbanism.

Right.  To go further, it’s simply bizarre to criticize people for trying to build desirable communities for themselves simply because some people living elsewhere don’t have it so good.

Beyond that, it’s worth reading recent posts by Andrew Sullivan and others in reaction to Pat Buchanan’s latest article lamenting the loss of white American culture.   The upshot of all of them is that, as Sully puts it, “white Americans do not realize how black they are.”  By which he means how much of our culture is impacted by black culture via what we used to call “the melting pot.”   See Sully here, here, here, here, here, and here.   Also James Poulos.  Ann Althouse disagrees slightly.

“Diversity” is something that’s been advanced as a goal in recent years and which has in turn sparked a counter-diversity push by whites, like Buchanan, who see it as a threat.  It’s a very odd thing in that there’s never been a more diverse culture anywhere.  Not only are we a giant melting pot drawn from all the world’s cultures — even while our common core is Western European — but we’re incredibly heterogeneous.  Life varies from city-to-city, state-to-state, and region-to-region.  And “diversity” means more than “percentage of poor blacks.”

So, it’s more than slightly odd for someone to argue for more diversity by arguing we ought all be more alike.

Andrew Sullivan says Olympia Snowe can do pretty much whatever she wants, “Because she has more Democratic support in her state than Republican, and the combination makes her impregnable.”

She’s 62 years old, for goodness sakes. Surely, if she were planning to have children, she’d have done so by now.

Rush Limbaugh has gotten everyone from Media Matters to The Guardian to Andrew Sullivan to Paul Krugman to Raw Story to FireDogLake up in arms because he allegedly suggested that a NYT reporter kill himself.  Except that, to anyone familiar with either Limbaugh or the conventions of American English, it’s rather obvious he was illustrating absurdity by being absurd.

Here’s the actual quote, as supplied by Media Matters:

I think these militant environmentalists, these wackos, have so much in common with the jihad guys. Let me explain this. What do the jihad guys do? The jihad guys go to families under their control and they convince these families to strap explosives on who? Not them. On their kids. Grab your 3-year-old, grab your 4-year-old, grab your 6-year-old, and we’re gonna strap explosives on there, and then we’re going to send you on a bus, or we’re going to send you to a shopping center, and we’re gonna tell you when to pull the trigger, and you’re gonna blow up, and you’re gonna blow up everybody around you, and you’re gonna head up to wherever you’re going, 73 virgins are gonna be there. The little 3- or 4-year-old doesn’t have the presence of mind, so what about you? If it’s so great up there, why don’t you go? Why don’t you strap explosives on you — and their parents don’t have the guts to tell the jihad guys, “You do it! Why do you want my kid to go blow himself up?” The jihad guys will just shoot ‘em, ’cause the jihad guys have to maintain control.

The environmentalist wackos are the same way. This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?

Rather clearly, Limbaugh isn’t so angry about a silly blog post that he actually thinks Revkin deserves to die.  Rather, he thinks Revkin is an idiot with really screwed up priorities. Limbaugh is employing standard reductio ad absurdum logic here:

• Revkin argues that we should reduce the number of babies being born as a means of reducing CO2 emissions and thereby saving the planet.
• By that logic, “the planet” is more important than people
• Revkin should demonstrate his commitment by ending his own life.

Update (Alex Knapp): Actually, Rush Limbaugh’s big crime here isn’t “telling someone to off himself” — it’s plagarism. This is almost exactly the same joke that the late, great comedian Bill Hicks did in his act around 1991:

People pay lip service to saving the planet, but they don’t – they fail to make the big leap that if you want to save the planet, kill your fucking self. The planet will be saved without you. And what a delightful place it’ll be.

I’ll give Limbaugh credit: he’s stealing from possibly the best comedian of the 20th Century.

Andrew Sullivan illustrates his latest post with this photo:

It’s a amusing question made unintentionally more clever by omission of an apostrophe.

A posting at a blog called Classically Liberal, which apparently covers this topic with some regularity, draws attention to the criminalization of adolescent sex.

Not long ago a curious adolescent or child, caught exploring, or playing doctor in the back yard, was given a talking-to, sent to bed early, and warned to not do it again—a warning most heeded for at least another few years, after which time warnings were useless. Today, it has been criminalized, and criminalized in a way far exceeding crimes of violence. A youth who has sex with another youth, even if voluntary, could well face legal sentences far worse than if they had killed their friend.

[...]

It takes so little for this happen to a child. A girl in school has oral sex with a boy in school. She becomes a sex offender for the rest of her life. Streaking a school event, as a practical joke, becomes a sex crime in the new America. Two kids “moon” a passerby and are incarcerated in jail as sex offenders, where they may well learn a lesson or two about rape. A teenager, who takes a sexy of photo of him, or herself, is paraded around the community as a “child pornographer” for the rest of his or her life. Two kids in the back seat of a car have fumbling sex. The law says one is an offender because the other is a “victim.” One week later, a birthday passes, and it is no longer a crime. One week’s difference and a life is ruined. In other cases an act that is legal on Monday is illegal on Tuesday because the older of the two turned one year older. That becomes enough to qualify him, or her, as an offender.

This is indeed a truly bizarre situation.  I understand the rationale behind and generally support statutory rape laws, which maintain that children lack the capacity to form consent.  It makes sense to prosecute 35-year-olds who have sex with 13-year-olds.  Not so much, though, 18-year-olds who have sex with 16-year-olds.  And it’s just insane to criminalize 14-year-olds having sex with other 14-year-olds.  Indeed, absent the use of force or other coercion, I’m at pains to understand how a child can commit sexual assault.

via Radley Balko and Andrew Sullivan

A census worker was found hanged in Kentucky in a bizarre and grisly case.

When Bill Sparkman told retired trooper Gilbert Acciardo that he was going door-to-door collecting census data in rural Kentucky, the former cop drew on years of experience for a warning: “Be careful.”  The 51-year-old Sparkman was found this month hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment.

“Even though he was with the Census Bureau, sometimes people can view someone with any government agency as ‘the government.’ I just was afraid that he might meet the wrong character along the way up there,” said Acciardo, who directs an after-school program at an elementary school where Sparkman was a frequent substitute teacher.

The Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, until the investigation is complete, an official said.

The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, did not say what type of instrument was used to write the word on the chest of Sparkman, who was supplementing his income doing Census field work. He was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of Daniel Boone National Forest and an autopsy report is pending.

[...]

FBI spokesman David Beyer said the bureau is assisting state police and declined to discuss any details of the crime scene. Agents are trying to determine if foul play was involved and whether it had anything to do with Sparkman’s job as Census worker, Beyer said. Attacking a federal worker during or because of his federal job is a federal crime.  Lucindia Scurry-Johnson, assistant director of the Census Bureau’s southern office in Charlotte, N.C., said law enforcement officers have told the agency the matter is “an apparent homicide” but nothing else.

Given the stereotypes about rural Kentucky, this will fuel all manner of speculation.  One presumes it was indeed a homicide and motivated by anti-government sentiment. But, really, we don’t know.

UPDATE: No more news on the investigation but Andrew Sullivan found an old news clip indicating that Sparkman was a cancer survivor who just finished his education degree last year.

When Bill Sparkman earned his teaching degree in February, it wasn’t the usual walk down the aisle to pick up the onion skin. Instead, Sparkman stood in front of his fellow classmates and told his story. What with going back to school at the age of 47, surviving cancer mid-degree and driving through a blizzard to get to the commencement ceremony, Sparkman’s story had the makings of a movie.

In 1993, Sparkman moved to Laurel County as part of an assignment for his job with the Boy Scouts of America. Shortly after arriving, he became a volunteer at Johnson Elementary.  “When I moved here, my son was about to enter elementary school,” he said. “He was having some difficulties.”  Sparkman enjoyed the volunteering and quickly became interested in education. He was eventually offered a position as an instructional assistant, which he accepted.

“For the nine years I did it, I loved it,” he said. “But there were some instructional assistants going back to get their degree to teach.” Sparkman wanted to do the same but, being a single parent to son Josh, he didn’t think it would be possible.  “If I went to school at night, it would take me forever,” he said. “I also knew that I would have to student teach. I wouldn’t have any income for two or three months.”

In 2004, Sparkman discovered Utah-based Western Governor’s University, an online college that would enable him to study from home. In January 2005, Sparkman took on a part-time position with the U.S. Census Bureau.

Andrew concludes “suicide is unlikely” and I concur. He continues, “at some point, unhinged hostility to the federal government, whipped up by the Becks, can become violence.” Which is, of course, true even absent the Becks. And it’s a real possibility that we have an anti-government zealot here. Or a moonshiner or pot grower that Sparkman happened to stumble upon. Or any number of other things.

The OMB statement:

“It’s a tragedy. Our hearts and our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of this worker,” Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry said Thursday morning. He has spoken frequently about the denigration of federal employees. “I’m going to be closely following this law enforcement action. If this is an attack on a federal employee, I can assure you that no resources will be spared to find the perpetrators,” Berry said. “We cannot tolerate essentially domestic terrorism, if that is what this is. But until we understand the law enforcement investigation, we don’t know.”

Threats are more common than actual attacks on federal employees, Berry said. He noted that people regularly threaten federal judges and their families, IRS agents and federal law enforcement officers.

“It’s also a reality for many categories of federal workers so we take any threat of violence seriously,” he said.

UPDATE: TPM’s Zachary Roth points to and ABC News report that confirms I’m not the only one speculating in the direction of drugs:

Investigators are saying little about the crime, but some people wonder if his death in the remote part of southeastern Kentucky known for its meth labs and hidden marijuana fields had less to do with his job than simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Dan Gilgoff passes on word of a new survey projecting that a quarter of Americans will be atheists or non-believers twenty years from now.

If current trends continue, a quarter of Americans are likely to claim “no religion” in 20 years, according to a survey out today by Trinity College. Americans who identify with no religious tradition currently comprise 15 percent of the country, representing the fastest growing segment of the national religious landscape.

While the numbers portend a dramatic change for the American religious scene—”religious nones” accounted for just 8 percent of the population in 1990—the United States is not poised adopt the anti-religious posture of much of secularized Europe. That’s because American religious nones tend to be religious skeptics as opposed to outright atheists. Fewer than ten percent of those identifying with no religious tradition call themselves atheists or hold atheistic beliefs, according to the new study. “American nones are kind of agnostic and deistic, so it’s a very American kind of skepticism,” says Barry Kosmin, director of Trinity’s Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. “It’s a kind of religious indifference that’s not hostile to religion the way they are in France. Franklin and Jefferson would have recognized these people.”

The new study found that, in addition to seeing relatively strong retention numbers, American nones are quickly gaining new members. “Twenty-two percent of the youngest cohort of adults self-identify as nones and they will become tomorrow’s parents,” according to the report. “If current trends continue and cohorts of non-religious young people replace older religious people, the likely outcome is that in two decades the nones could account for around one-quarter of the American population.”

Not surprisingly, Andrew Sullivan attributes the rise of the nones partly to “the intellectual collapse of Christianity under the leadership of Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic theocons.” He adds, “The well-deserved inability of literalists to win many converts among educated people is also surely salient. The emergence of the politicized Christianist right – and its assault on Christianity as a freely chosen spiritual process – will surely lead to a continued and accelerating flight from organized religion.”

While I know many highly educated believers, they do indeed seem to be less than literal in their theology.  But Andrew believes this could lead to a renaissance of faith: “61 percent of Nones find evolution convincing, compared with 38 percent of all Americans. And yet they do not dismiss the possibility of a God they do not understand; and refuse to call themselves atheists. This is the fertile ground on which a new Christianity will at some point grow.”

Color me skeptical.  Religion without wild leaps of faith strikes me as almost pointless.  And I’m not sure the reluctance to jump from “none” to “atheist” is a pining for a more intellectual theology so much as wanting to avoid the cultural stigma that comes with the latter.

This is the view of PZ Myers who, naturally, is “disappointed” and contemptuous.  “I will not be content until the number is 100%. (OK, 95%. It’s not fair to demand rationality from people who are brain damaged or locked up in asylums.)”

Every article I see on this subject makes this desperate rush to reassure their readers that this growing cohort of Americans aren’t really those goddamned atheists — they’re nice people, unlike those cold-hearted, soulless beasts called atheists, and they aren’t planning to storm your churches and rape the choir boys and boil babies in the baptismal fonts, unlike the scary atheistic monsters. They’re special. And most of all, they aren’t French.

[...]

Oh, please. All the low frequency of self-reported atheists in the survey tells you is that the long-running campaign in American culture to stigmatize atheism has been highly successful — and it’s an attitude that we still see expressed in reports like this. The most important news they try to transmit is not the increase in unbelievers, it’s “Thank God they aren’t atheists! They’re just rational skeptics, instead!”

I suspect part of the reason that people are reluctant to call themselves “atheists” is a fear of being lumped in with the likes of Myers, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins.  Not satisfied to use their considerable brainpower to argue for scientific explanations over supernatural ones, they instead show utter disdain for the overwhelming majority of their fellow citizens who were brought up in a religious tradition and cling to parts of it.  “Atheism” in this sense isn’t a mere belief that there is no supernatural overlord controlling our universe but a quasi-religion of its own, with many of the worst traits of organized religion.

Similarly, AllahPundit likes the trend but is baffled by the non-believers who have a “personal god” or otherwise quasi-religious beliefs.   But that strikes me as a cultural phenomenon rather than a purely religious one.  America is steeped in religious traditions that are followed even by non-believers.  Pretty much everyone celebrates Christmas, for example, and even Easter — a more purely religious occasion that doesn’t even result in an extra day off work — has a huge secular buy-in, what with Easter bunnies and the various fun traditions for kids.  Not only does Big Business glom onto these occasions but they’re also massive public rituals, as well.  The President lights the national Christmas tree.  He hosts an Easter egg roll.   We reflexively say “Bless you” when people sneeze and take the Lord’s name in vain when we’re angry, regardless whether we believe in said Lord’s existence.

A sizable number of America’s self-described “religious,” even those who attend church with some regularity, aren’t religious in the sense that their 16th Century forebears were.  They pick and choose from the teachings of their chosen faith at will, occasionally even choosing a new faith altogether for reasons of “comfort” and convenience.  It’s a communal experience from which many draw inspiration and comfort.

Image: SoulPancake

Jonathan Last has somehow obtained a memorandum [PDF], dated yesterday, written by U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings in the matter of Andrew  Sullivan, who was caught in a federal park with small amounts of a controlled substance but whom the U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute in the “interests of justice.” To wit: Paying the $125 fine would make it harder to conceal from immigration officials that he had been charged with said crime.

Says Collings:

In the Court’s view, in seeking leave to dismiss the charge against Mr. Sullivan, the United States Attorney is not being faithful to a cardinal principle of our legal system, i.e., that all persons stand equal before the law and are to be treated equally in a court of justice once judicial processes are invoked. It is quite apparent that Mr. Sullivan is being treated differently from others who have been charged with the same crime in similar circumstances.

He says much more but that’s the gist. Last adds:

Sullivan and his attorney claim that paying the $125 fine would create a record of his being charged with possession of a controlled substance. Collings notes that whether or not Sullivan ever paid the fine, “if asked by immigration authorities, [he] would have to answer truthfully that he had been charged with a crime involving controlled substances.” So why would it matter whether or not Sullivan just pays the $125? Because if he doesn’t pay it, it makes it easier for him to answer untruthfully.

In other words, the State decided that it was in the interest of justice to help Andrew Sullivan lie to another agency of the State.

Look, if Sullivan’s able to beat a minor charge, good for him. (Though can you imagine what he would say if the defendant was a guy named “Bush”?) There’s no reason he shouldn’t defend himself as zealously as possible. As always, the problem is the shame and dishonor he brings on a larger institution, in this case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Commenter “Z” piles on:

(1) Given that there is strong evidence that Sullivan violated federal law, doesn’t the rule of law require that he be prosecuted? That is (as he proudly quoted only a few days ago), “if you genuinely believe in the rule of law, you can’t invoke political expediency as a guide to whether possible crimes should be investigated and prosecuted.” Right?

(2) Given that the U.S. Department of Justice has provided Sullivan with a substantial benefit, shouldn’t he recuse himself from any and all commentary on the Department of Justice? Or do those sorts of rules apply only to journalists with allegedly pro-Palin conflicts of interest?

Ouch! Touché! Zing!

As to the issue of Sully’s hypocrisy, it’s rather slight.  That he argues that the Bush administration should be held accountable for abiding by international treaty, federal statute, and executive orders on torture does not obligate him to demand the enforcement of the letter of every other law.  Further, he has been forthright — indeed, to the point of zealously beating his readers around the head with a dead horse — about his disdain for our drug laws and, especially, the benefits of using marijuana.  And asking Greta van Susteren to disclose that her husband is on Sarah Palin’s payroll is not exactly unreasonable, let alone applicable to his own commentary on the DoJ.

As to the disposition of the matter, I generally agree with Collings:  Either we prosecute people for possessing small amounts of marijuana in federal parks or we don’t.  It’s odd, indeed, to have an exception to the rule that we arrest citizens for such infractions but not non-citizens applying for citizenship.   But, on occasion, the law is an ass.  In this particular case, the penalty for an infraction so slight that we ordinarily punish it with less vigor than going 12 miles over the posted limit on the interstate would effectively be deportation.  It’s not unreasonable for a U.S. Attorney to weigh the likely result of prosecution and decide that, in this highly unusual instance, the impact would be unjust.

Via Jayvie Canono, who I gather disagrees.

UPDATE: This story has gone viral in the blogosphere, which isn’t surprising given that arguably the most famous blogger is at the center of the story.

Stacy McCain jokes, “Forget about the Mexican drug cartels — save us from the AIDS-Infected British Dope Menace!”  He adds, “As a former teenage hoodlum who used to deal dope in felony weights, allow me to offer my Darwinian/draconian case for strict enforcement: Anybody stupid enough to get busted for dope is a danger to himself and others and should be locked up for the good of society.”

Ace works a “wee weed up” reference into the title and implies that Sullivan’s having “had a personal meeting with Obama, with other leftist bloggers” figured into this dismissal, despite noting that it was a careerist in the U.S. Attorney’s office, not an Obama appointee, who made the call.

Dan Collins questions the timing.

JammieWearingFool snarks, “Sounds like grounds for deportation to me. Otherwise people may get the impression there are two Americas. One for us regular folk and another for whacked-out conspiratorial bloggers.”

Damien Penny suggests “The past 18 months or so illustrate why one shouldn’t toke and blog, man.”

Jacob Sullum agrees with me on the hypocrisy angle but laments the degree to which the rich and connected can get special treatment in drug cases.

Glenn Reynolds supports legalization but guesses “Andrew would no doubt make a big deal out of any special treatment afforded to a member of the Palin family under similar circumstances.”

Stephen Green is just generally amused.

Andrew Sullivan has been blogging nearly ten years now and notes “it’s grueling month after month being responsible for up to 300 posts a week.”  So he’s taking a month off to avoid burn-out.

Which is fine, of course.  Sully is as prolific as any blogger out there.  Indeed, Jim Henley argues, he likely blogs too much.  (He said the same of me, too, but my production has been decidedly down of late.) But didn’t he just return from vacation?  Indeed, he seems to go on vacation with some frequency.  Or, perhaps, he merely announces a lot of vacations.

It may be an American vs. European thing. On this side of the Pond, we’re lucky to get more than two weeks a year off and we tend to take it in bites rather than all at once.  Over there, monthlong vacations are the norm and two months off is not unheard of.  They may have the right idea.

Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that Daniel Indiviglio argues that “We like bad customer service.”

Actually, though, while he states it, he doesn’t really argue that at all.  Rather, he argues that we’re not willing to pay more for good customer service and thus provide no incentive to companies to provide it.

Let’s say you have two options for a flight from New York to Miami. Everything about the two flights is identical except for two things: One airline has poor customer service, but offers you a ticket for $50 cheaper. Do you take the more expensive flight in order to secure the better customer service at a higher price?

Most people, in fact, buy by price.  Which partly explains why airlines have had a race to the bottom in customer service and flying is now only slightly more pleasant than taking a Greyhound bus full of winos.

Then again, there’s not much way of knowing when you buy a ticket which of the two carriers will provide a better experience.   Few of us fly enough to have an informed basis for forming a judgment and I’m not aware of any really good independent comparison mechanism.  For that matter, carriers known for providing a pleasant experience, like JetBlue, do in fact inspire a certain degree of loyalty; but since they also tend to be cheap, it’s hard to disaggregate the effects.

This illustrates an important point: through consumer demand, we ultimately control customer service. If poor customer service was really bothered us, then we could boycott the worst of the perpetrators. I happen to be one of the few people who sticks to a boycott when I’ve been terribly wronged, but I think I’m in the minority. (For example, I haven’t eaten Taco Bell in more than 10 years after swearing it off due to an exceptionally bad experience.) Most people have a very short memory when it comes to bad customer service, especially when low prices entice them return to the company where they experienced annoyance last time.

Most of us, I think, will quickly stop going to restaurants that serve lousy food or treat us rudely.  There are plenty of ready substitutes, after all.  It’s harder, though, for other things.  For example, I refuse to shop at the local Wal-Mart, despite it being conveniently located and typically lower prices, because the shopping experience is so bloody awful.  But it took repeated frustration with the store to instill that because the alternatives are a Target store that’s much nicer but farther away or numerous stops at specialty stores.

This is especially problematic with chain stores.  If I’m treated poorly by at a sole proprietorship, I can assume that this will be the norm and discontinue shopping there.  But one’s experience at a 7-11 really tells you very little about your next trip to that 7-11, let alone how other 7-11s operate.

Regardless, Indiviglio’s larger point is true.  For example, hatred of automated customer service systems (For assistance with installing applications on your iPhone, please press 17) is universal.  Yet they’re now the norm.  They’re obviously cheaper than giving customers what they want — a real, live operator instantly –and customers put up with it.

“I think it would be awesome for Andrew Sullivan if all the documents end up proving that Barack Obama is Trig Palin’s father.” – Jim Henley

If you have no idea what the hell he’s talking about, your life is richer for it.

Andrew Sullivan thinks Republicans hate the cash-for-clunkers program, wherein the government gives people up to $4500 of taxpayer money to trade in their cars for newer ones that get slightly better gas mileage, out of “emotional reaction to the end of the far right’s dominance of American discourse.”

[C]ash-for-clunkers is one example of the government actually doing something right, helpful and popular. It’s the kind of pragmatic experimentation that FDR tried repeatedly. So you have a practical, targeted measure that seems to have helped abate a deeper recession in the auto industry, and the right is obsessed with the ideological abstraction of “government.”

What conservatives have to do, in my view, is not demonize government, but to champion limited government. If government can do tangible practical things that help everyone, while balancing its budget, it’s doing what conservatives think it should. Smart, practical initiatives that address problems that the private sector has failed at: what else is government for? The rest is ideology – and it seems to be all the Republicans have left.

My word, how can one simultaneously champion limited government and defend this program?!

Of course it’s popular. As Dave Schuler notes, “Free money always is.” The problem is that “this money isn’t free, the program doesn’t help the environment, it doesn’t necessarily help U. S. automakers, it isn’t targeted at people in need, and it doesn’t help the economy.”

But isn’t the auto industry failing? And didn’t people rush out to buy new cars with this nifty, FDR-style innovatively awesome program of just the type Michael Oakeshott would have loved?  Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl thinks not:

As we noted earlier in July, over 100,000 buyers had put their purchase on hold waiting for the Cash for Clunkers to launch. Is it any wonder that showrooms filled and the government servers crashed when this backlog of buyers rushed to finalize their purchase?

Secondly, last week we published an analysis showing that in any given month 60,000 to 70,000 “clunkerlike” deals happen with no government program in place. In other words, the 200,000-plus deals the government was originally prepared to fund were barely above the “natural” clunker trade-in rate.

So, the program was destined to sell out quickly. As word of this spread around the Internet, any consumer with any interest at all, rushed into their local dealership so as to not be left out.

Clearly, the sales frenzy of last week was inevitable. In fact, students of economic theory will quickly recognize the dynamics of a classic shortage. We have taken three to four months of normal activity and caused them to occur over a few days, as consumers rushed to not miss out.

Stan Collender worries that we’ve essentially created a new entitlement, with people conditioned to demand money from the government as incentive to take actions they were likely to take anyway.

The cynics at WSJ pile on:

The subsidy won’t add to net national wealth, since it merely transfers money to one taxpayer’s pocket from someone else’s, and merely pays that taxpayer to destroy a perfectly serviceable asset in return for something he might have bought anyway. By this logic, everyone should burn the sofa and dining room set and refurnish the homestead every couple of years.

Why not, they wonder, offer $4500 subsidies for everything?

Clearly, we spoilsports need an attitude adjustment to Washington’s new economics. And since money is no object, let’s give everyone a $4,500 voucher for other consumer goods. Let’s have taxpayers subsidize the purchase of kitchen appliances, women’s clothing, the latest Big Bertha driver—our Taylor-made is certainly a clunker—and new fishing boats. These are hardly less deserving of subsidies than cars, and as long as everyone thinks we can conjure wealth out of $4,500 giveaways, let’s go all the way.

Piggybacking on WSJ’s point, it strikes me that the “clunkers” aspect of this arrangement is morally dubious.  Glenn Reynolds‘ 2004 Mazda RX-8 is a clunker that, were he so inclined, he would be eligible to trade to the government (indirectly) for $4500.  It would then be scrapped.  Doesn’t this remove a perfectly good used car from the market that some person of modest means could otherwise have purchased, either upgrading from an older, less reliable vehicle or none at all?  And doesn’t doing that mean the price of other used cars will increase accordingly?

Andrew Sullivan gushes over Chris Steiner’s concept of  $20 per gallon gasoline.

$20 a gallon is about the only thing that could unleash the genius of the market in energy innovation. And nothing else will really do anything to abate climate change. Bring it on!

Now, it’s quite conceivable that the forced innovation would indeed make our lives better in ways that I can’t imagine.  For upper middle class yuppies living in our urban centers, it might be really swell.

But the transitional impact would be absolutely devastating for most people.   Even Steiner admits that whole industries — from airlines to amusement parks to sushi restaurants — would go under.   Almost all homes outside urban centers would be simultaneously unlivable and unsellable.   Only the independently wealthy would be able to travel abroad.  Essentially, we’d set our lifestyles back a hundred years.

We’re not going to all be in utopian walking neighborhoods in big cities, either.  They’re incredibly expensive already and the competition will only increase.

Further, Steiner’s notion that everyone would migrate into “energy-related startups” is an absurd fantasy.  Few people will have the intellectual capacity, much less the training and education, to do anything but menial work at the cutting edge of science.