Saturday Morning Reading

A few things of interest this morning:

1. Did you know that Georgia still has segregated proms? Separate but equal you know, except not really. I think the quickest way to fix this would be for the black high schoolers to crash the white proms. Once white parents predictably overreact and thus demonstrate their racism to one degree another, there will be enough public pressure to change this.

2. More on Obama's "preventive detention" proposal. Thanks, but no thanks. Personally, I don't feel like living in The Minority Report. Either people are planning to commit a terrorist attack, and thus committing a crime, or they aren't.

3. Bob Herbert weighs in on Troy Davis, who is slated to be executed even though there is compelling evidence that he did not commit the crime he is convicted of. When a man can conceivably be put to death despite compelling questions regarding his guilt, it is an indictment of the death penalty in general.

4. The Pakistan Army's offensive against the Taliban in Swat is not going as terribly as was feared it might, but neither are the Taliban proving to be an easy enemy to oust.

5. Republicans are staking their electoral hopes on a desperate wish for Obama to fail, and therefore doing the best they can to avoid dealing with ever-increasing unpopularity of their proposals and any need for party reform.

6. A profile of Leah Ward Sears, the first African-American woman to be Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court and potential nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

7. I had a chance to watch the streaming webcast of the Cliburn Competition, which kicked off yesterday. I was very impressed by the fact that their webcast is actually a full-fledged broadcast, complete with commentary, fillers between the performances, and backstage interviews with the competitors. Various camera angles make it easy to watch the competitors as they play, and the sound quality is impressive. The competition continues through June 7th, and you can watch it online here.

Futility

Let's see, how our local Republicans re-energizing themselves in the wake of the historically bad 2008 elections?

What are the intentions of Muslims in America? A local activist told a Republican club Monday night that Muslims are intent on overthrowing America. But the Tarrant County medical examiner, who is Muslim, denounced such remarks as hate speech.

Dorrie O’Brien was booked months ago to speak to the North Tarrant Republican Club. She riled local Muslims last month when she delivered a speech to a Republican club in Hurst in which she said most or all American Muslims support terrorism.

In her presentation to about 80 people, O’Brien said that Muslims are intent on converting the Western world to Islam. She described as "stealth jihad" a malicious effort by Muslims to subvert schools, local governments and banks throughout the country.

O’Brien reviewed the five pillars of Islam, noting that one of them is zakat, which means to give a percentage of one’s income to charity. "There is a tremendous amount of proof out there that the zakat is now funding terrorism," she said.

O’Brien also compared the Quran to the Bible and dismissed any suggestion that atrocities committed by Christians in the past were relevant to a debate about the present.

"I am not going to get into a theological discussion tonight, but I will flatly say, no, there is no way we are praying to the same God," she said.

Anybody worried about the 2010 mid-terms? Yeah, me neither.

Let's Not Get Carried Away

Before amybody goes link-happy over David Frum's new-found willingness to take on the right-wing of his own party (or well basically, his own party) let's not forget Mr. Frum's position on the less ideologically rigid members of the GOP in days of yore.

Not A Bad Start

Ross Douthat, in his first column for the NY Times, writes about how "instructive" a Cheney candidacy would have been to the Republican Party. Of course nothing would shake most of the right-wing from the belief in the rightness of the Bush presidency, but it might have given moderates and reformers a better chance at seizing control of the party. It's an interesting thought exercise at least.

Republican tax stupidity cost them huge evangelical benefactor

The tax fundamentalists are costing the GOP the Christian ones:

In what one might call a biblical move, Christian philanthropist Howard Ahmanson -- one of three major funders of the campaign for California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages -- has abandoned the GOP for the Democratic Party.

No one ever said the multimillionaire isn't idiosyncratic.

In a rare interview Thursday, Ahmanson shared some of his thoughts about why he switched parties. In a word, taxes.

Specifically, he was offended by the California Republican Party's insistence during a recent state budget battle that there would be no tax increases for any reason, no matter what. "They're providing one issue, and it's just a very silly issue," Ahmanson told me by telephone.

The Republican tent is getting smaller every day...

Senate Republicans Reject Auto Bailout

John Cole on the stupidity and mean-spiritedness of Republican Senators:

Just in case you are confused- Republicans object to a car czar overseeing the bailout because it is too much government interference, but a few Republican Senators dictating from Washington how much companies pay their workers is just the invisible hand of the free market bitch-slapping you while you are down.

No doubt, this principled stand against auto workers making too much money has nothing to do with the GOP's propensity to screw blue-collar workers and everything to do with a re-discovery of fiscal conservatism, a frugality they've discovered just in time to oppose bailouts that are needed to save our economy.