Festival of Incompetence

I honestly wish I had time to blog seriously, but unfortunately, I don't have the time. So, for example, right now I have the seeds of what I believe could be a solid post about the need to emphasize competence in government, but rather than lay out evidence and present a persuasive case and contribute in my small way to the nation discussion, I have to content myself with merely sketching.

Much has been made over the course of the last 4 years of Bush Administration incompetence, and there's no surprise there. However, what hasn't really been discussed is the remedy. No, I'm not really talking about impeachment, not directly anyway, but I am talking about taking some steps rhetorically and possibly, legislatively, to make incompetence a punishable offense. It should be anyway, but as this administration has shown time and again, the People, absent any nudging by the media or the opposition party, are willing to cut people in power a lot of slack.

As but two examples, take the recent assertion by Karl Rove's attorney that "...Rove had no idea the e-mails were being deleted from the server, a central computer that managed the e-mail," and the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to the press in the run-up to the war.

• In the case of the Plame leak, there is a statute called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act that criminalizes any act that "intentionally discloses any information identifying" a covert agent. Unfortunately, "intentionally" gives the Bush Adminstration a lot of cover, which is being used effectively by both the Vice President and Karl Rove.
• In the case of Rove's e-mails, there is the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which requires that "the President shall take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as Presidential records."

In both cases, it's clear that the Executive branch fucked up royally. However, in both cases, they are hiding successfully behind an incompetence defense, and this is what really needs to be addressed. We're talking about the President of the United States of America and his staff, not the night manager at Arby's; is "incompetence" really an adequate excuse for these people to escape the consequences of their actions?

And when did the conservative movement in this country, the movement of "personal responsibility" and "you'll go as far as your talent will take you" start settling for much less defending this kind of ineptitude?

When you're job is this important, shouldn't incompetence be just as criminal and just as disqualifying as deliberate acts of sabotage? The legislative remedy to this problem is to make no allowance for "mistakes". If Karl Rove was sufficiently afraid of the PRA, all he would have to do is make sure he saved every one of his emails; it's not that difficult.

Oh, and while I'm semi-on the subject, how is it we can even have these two simultaneous perceptions running around our national debate?

• Karl Rove is the genius who engineered sweeping GOP victoriees in 2000, 2002, and 2004...
• Karl Rove inadvertently deleted emails that he should have saved in violation of the PRA and only incidentally was using a non-White House RNC email server for 95% of his messaging, and only coincidentally do all of those emails appear to have something to do with one scandal or another, be it the firing of US Attorneys who did not sufficiently politicize their positions or the outing of a CIA operative whose husband was poking holes in your case for war...

Given that the first statement is almost universally accepted as true (even if Rove isn't a "genius", most people will still accept that he's a canny dirty-trickster, and that requires...well, being canny), it's almost impossible that the second one is true, so while the guy is innocent until proven guilty, let's all please accept that there is a massive case to be made against him.

The Dreadedness of the Dreaded Religious Right

The blogger Tristero at Hullabaloo has a seven-part (at least) series on, for lack of a better term, the Religious Right. He co-opts the word "Christianists", which I believe Dan alerted me to as an invention of Andrew Sullivan's. Still, everything comes back to the blogs these days, so it's not entirely absurd to think Sullivan stole it from Tristero. Anyway, Tristero's series is long and involved, but it's worth slogging through. Here are the links for the brave:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII

Anyway, he mentions some tidbits that give you an idea just how powerful the RR is:

One other point. You may think Rushdoony’s ideas as to be beneath serious notice. Therefore, please note that a major funder of Rushdoony's Christian Reconstrucion, billionaire Howard Ahmanson, funded the “intelligent design” creationism initiative at the Discovery Institute (Ahmanson sits on the board). That's correct: Major funding for "Intelligent design" creationism is linked directly to the ideas you will encounter here.Ahmanson also funds the Claremont Foundation, a rightwing cultural thinktank, and funded the recall initiative of California's governor Gray Davis. These are only a few of the initiatives Ahmanson has taken to advance the rightwing, and often specifically Republican, agenda.

Intelligent Design, as you may or may not have seen, is a warmed over re-write of Creationism designed to give the appearance of scientific validity to theology which recently met with a satisfying court defeat in Dover, PA. It's good that it lost the case, but it's a testament to the power of the various octopus appendages of the RR that such junk even got that far. And this is really the kind of thing that I fret over when it comes to the RR. It's not just that they're assaulting the Constitution or even Enlightenment ideas; it's that they're assaulting the very concepts of reason and rationality, gradually and generationally eroding the capacity of the masses for critical thinking, thereby making the masses ever less able to resist their pernicious influence.

A few further notes on the question of their influence are:
(1) Monica Goodling, former senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales who recently took the Fifth in the Congressional Hearings regarding the not-going-anywhere-and-possibly-the-downfall-of-the-Bush-Administration US Attorney purge scandal, was a graduate of Messiah College and Regent University (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/27/74143/0793). Regent U. is operated by Pat Robertson, and according to their site, 150 graduates currently serve in the Bush Administration
(2) "The Republican War on Science" by Chris Mooney has some examples of RR folks being appointed to key positions in the Executive Branch under Bush who immediately proceeded to politicize their offices and disseminate scientific and medical misinformation in the service of their religious agenda. For example, (http://oversight.house.gov/features/politics_and_science/example_breast_cancer.htm) the National Cancer Institute removed a note from its website which stated the accepted medical community consensus that there is no link between abortions and increased risk of breast cancer and instead added a note suggesting that whether or not abortion causes breast cancer is still an open question.

In short, though the number of regular citizens who could be counted as among the RR may still be pretty small, their influence on the levers of power shouldn't be underestimated. They are, as zealots by definition are, determined, tenacious, well-funded, and well-organized and efforts to counter-act their pernicious influence should be high on the list of things that need to get done in this country over the next 20 years.