It’s abuse, not torture —

Truthout links to this Newsday op-ed about the US media’s reluctance to use the word “torture” to describe what has been happening at Abu Ghraib. I heard on the news last night that the administration plans to release photos and interviews with Iraqis who were tortured by Saddam Hussein, apparently so that we can see how abuses by US prison guards are really much nicer by comparison. Isn’t that pathetic?

And how would you like your crow done? —

Eric Alterman doesn’t have much patience for the reassessments coming from the so-called Neocons and hawky journalists who are beginning to realize that Bush could lose his war on Iraq:

…Excuse me, but just what was so hard to understand about this bunch? We knew they were dishonest. We knew they were fanatical. We knew they were purposely ignorant and bragged about not reading newspapers. We knew they were vindictive. We knew they were lawless. We knew they were obsessively secretive. We knew they had no time or patience for those who raised difficult questions. We knew they were driven by fantasies of religious warfare, personal vengeance and ideological triumph. We knew they had no respect for civil liberties. And we knew they took no responsibility for the consequences of their incompetence. Just what is surprising about the manner in which they’ve conducted the war?

There’s a reason we call ourselves progressive Christians —

Roberta Ahmanson, board member of the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD):

The Christian community isn’t just who is alive… Christians believe that we are in communion with the living and the dead. We pray each week for the living and the dead, and most of the previous generations are in disagreement with a lot of this stuff… If you take the weight of Christianity for 2,000 years, all that weight is on the orthodox side.

Oh, so many ways to go with this… A friend who pointed me to this Times article profiling the IRD wondered if they would use the same weighting system to reverse all of our 20th century achievements in civil rights, health care, chid care, etc. But of course! They are conservatives, afterall. Another friend wrote, “I guess they forgot about what Jesus was doing in his ministry, which at least to some of us, seemed to be entirely not about the orthodoxy of his time.” Well, the IRD is an organization whose raison d’etre is to divide Protestant denominations into bitterly warring conservative and liberal camps (on a spectrum of biblical orthodoxy), with the goal of getting the liberals to leave (according to the president of the organization). Writers Goodstein and Kirkpatrick declare that the IRD is “now playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the future of American Protestantism since churches split over slavery at the time of the Civil War.” Well, that says a lot right there, but today, instead of slavery “…the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination’s leaders.” In other words, if your church insists on ordaining women, or on using the NRSV, or on treating gay and lesbian individuals like human beings, withhold your money! Starve the beast! The piece is worth reading, if only to learn more about the interdenominational efforts and tactics this group of unhappy people will use to press their religious and political agenda.

Take that! —

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 takes the top prize at Cannes!!!

Keep on them —

Nationwide momentum is building to protect electronic votes from power outtages, software glitches, and database tampering…