Lamentation for Independence Day

The editorial board of the Jewish Daily Forward gets it exactly right in the June 26 issue, written in anticipation of Independence Day one week from now. Under the headline, "The Gift of Freedom," the Forward says:

Most of us seldom give much thought to the Fourth of July. It’s one of the most important holidays on our national calendar, one of the very few that is observed simultaneously by all Americans without regard to faith, origin or regional whim. It is, some say, the only holiday specifically dedicated to celebrating this nation. For all that, we mostly celebrate with barbecues or trips to the beach. If we seek some holiday spirit, we might watch a parade or catch some fireworks. A few of us might even get to thinking — some joyfully, others with mixed feelings — about patriotism, the flag or our soldiers overseas.

Ever since I moved to Charlottesville (with, I think, one exception), I have spent the morning of the Fourth of July on top of Mr. Jefferson's Little Mountain to celebrate Independence Day with new citizens as they take their oath of naturalization at the able hands of judges from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Over the years the speakers have included Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (in 2000; photo at left), author Frank McCourt, newspaper publisher Al Neuharth, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and actor Sam Waterston (in 2007, photo below) (I've been hoping that late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson will be invited soon; he became an American citizen in February and talked about the process on his show -- his pride in being an AmCit is palpable.)

I've been lucky in that some years I've gone as "press" (even before I was blogging) and usually had a great seat in the media corral. Consequently, I've got some terrific pictures and (last year, for the first time) video. In addition, Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville take turns, year by year, in setting up a voter registration table to grab the new citizens before it's too late.

I won't be going up the mountain this year, however, because although it was earlier announced that the speaker would be documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, today the word went out that Burns has been bumped by Bush -- President George W. Bush, that is.

It's not that I have any objection in principle to the president speaking. Under other circumstances, it could be interesting. But his presence is going to cause inconvenience of major proportions. What has been a rather informal, local event -- the Charlottesville Municipal Band plays patriotic tunes, local Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts lead the Pledge of Allegiance -- will be turned into a circus.

Normally, anyone can attend the naturalization ceremony. It requires no ticket, no entry fee. People are free to wander the grounds. (The ceremony ends just before noon, so that those who wish to do so can walk down to Mr. Jefferson's gravesite to observe a family service commemorating the anniversary of his death.)

None of that will be true this year. Security will be at a premium. People will be searched, prodded, and scrutinized for their political opinions. It won't be fun, entertaining, or informative -- just a hassle.

It's not just the metal detectors and body cavity searches that concern me. When President Bush comes to a public event, those who disagree with him are discouraged from attending -- sometimes even prevented from attending by force. What will happen if someone shows up with t-shirts indicating support for Barack Obama or Ron Paul? Or t-shirts with slogans like "The Constitution Means What It Says," "Stop the War!," or "What Part of 'Limited Government' Don't You Understand?"? (Placards and signs of any sort will, of course, be forbidden, though t-shirts can be hidden under other garments and displayed at the right moment.) Will Albemarle County police be on hand to arrest people for exercising their First Amendment rights?

This won't be the first time a sitting U.S. President has spoken at Monticello on July 4th. In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford was the featured speaker. Unlike our current president, Ford was modest in his approach to the office. (Churchill might have said he "has a lot to be modest about," but he would have been incorrect.)

Ford inherited the White House from another president who, like Bush, failed to understand that the Constitution provides for three co-equal branches of government. Like Bush, Richard Nixon tried to expand the powers of the presidency with utter disregard for Congress and the Courts. Like Bush, Nixon was paranoid and rigid, with little understanding for free markets or individual liberty. Nixon famously compiled an "enemies list" of those who disagreed with him on policy issues.

Ford, in contrast, understood that Congress and the Courts also had a role to play in the making of public policy. He rejected the "imperial presidency" model, although his chief of staff (later vice president) Dick Cheney took away from the Ford White House a festering theory of the "unified presidency," which manifests itself in such things as "signing statements" in which the President, rather than vetoing a bill as provided by the Constitution, signs it but explains what parts he feels the Executive Branch can disobey. (Ford vetoed more bills in a month than Bush has vetoed in the entire eight years of his presidency.)

One of the traditions at the Monticello Independence Day celebration is for the Clerk of the Circuit Court to read the preamble to the Declaration of Independence (the part that begins, "When in the course of human events ...")

Wouldn't it be delicious if this year, in addition to the preamble, he could also read the bill of indictment that makes up the core of the Declaration? For those unfamiliar with it, here are a few lines of reminder:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good...

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only...

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:...

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:...

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:...

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation...

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people....

While I would love to see the expression on George Bush's face as that text is being read out, I still prefer to spend my Fourth of July without being wanded by a security guard. So I expect I'll be as far from Monticello this year as possible. I may even head up to D.C. for the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival and the fireworks on the National Mall.

Leave it to this White House to ruin the Fourth of July.

Update, Monday, June 30: Monticello has announced that there will be a limited number of tickets available to the ceremony on July 4. Only one thousand free tickets will be distributed beginning at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday, July 2. I wonder whether the friends and family members of the new citizens will be required to get those tickets, or if they have another means to attend the ceremony.

Hunter Parrish, Hunted Celebrity

Hunter Parrish, who plays teen hunk "Silas" on the Showtime cable TV series, Weeds, is unusually popular these days. I have seen a rush of hits today (and in recent weeks) from people looking for him.

According to SiteMeter, these are the twelve most popular searches leading to my blog:

hunter parrish shirtless
circumcised celebrities
hunter parrish nude
hunter parrish gay
josh hutcherson shirtless
hunter parrish naked
tyler whitney
rick sincere
aaron carter drugs
us airways sucks
mark ellmore
"hunter parrish" shirtless

Republican congressional candidate Mark Ellmore must be pleased to find himself in eleventh place, directly behind "US Airways sucks" and close on the heels of "Aaron Carter drugs."

I wonder if anyone is having success in finding nude/naked/shirtless pictures of Hunter Parrish or his nearest rival on this list, Josh Hutcherson.

Update: Hunter Parrish continues to be unusually popular, especially on nights that Weeds is on TV.


Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter!

Mamma Mia! Comes to Washington

The national tour of Mamma Mia! (best known as "the ABBA musical") arrives tonight in Washington, D.C. The show opens at the National Theatre on Pennsylvania Avenue for a two-week run.

I interviewed one of the members of the cast, Rebecca Covington, for the Metro Herald. Here's the result of that interview.

Mamma Mia! Comes to Washington:
An Interview with Cast Member Rebecca Covington
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

Mamma Mia!, the West End and Broadway musical with the songs of ABBA (written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus), comes to Washington for two-week engagement ending on July 13, just in time for the debut of the film version of the stage hit. (The film opens July 18 and stars Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan.)

Now in its tenth year in London and after six years on Broadway, Mamma Mia!’s national tour comes to the National Theatre from Denver and St. Louis, on its way to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Tampa, and Chicago.

Leading the cast of 30 is Susie McMonagle as Donna Sheridan, the independent single mother whose carefree past catches up with her on the eve of her daughter's wedding. Prior to Mamma Mia!, Susie could be seen on Broadway as Fantine in Les Misérables and in the National Tours of The Secret Garden, The Sound of Music, Les Misérables, and Pump Boys and Dinettes. Bride-to-be Sophie Sheridan is played by Rose Sezniak, who is a recent graduate of Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Her fiancé Sky is played by Geoffrey Hemingway.

Kittra Wynn Coomer and Michelle Dawson play Donna's best friends and former back-up band, Rosie and Tanya (respectively), who reunite with their best friend on the island for Sophie's wedding. The three men from Donna's past and Sophie's possible dads are John Hemphill (Sam Carmichael), Martin Kildare (Bill Austin), and Michael Aaron Lindner (Harry Bright). Sophie's and Sky's best friends are played by Rebecca Covington (Ali), Nicole Laurenzi (Lisa), Adam Kaokept (Pepper), and Anthony CeFala (Eddie).

The Metro Herald had an opportunity to speak with cast member Rebecca Covington, who was on the road with Mamma Mia! in Denver, about her life in the theatre, how she came to join this production, and her previous visits to Washington, D.C.

Covington was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, where she showed early signs of musical talent. She started playing the violin at the age of two. “My older brother was playing violin,” she said, “and I begged to play it. That’s why I started so young, because it was in the house.”

Playing the violin led her to a local school for the performing arts, where she was a “violin major” by the time she was in the fourth grade. That is when she had her first experience on stage. “I did a show called Big Moment, Small World,” which was a Disney revue, and “I played a fork in ‘Be Our Guest.’”

The turning point in her life – when she decided to move from orchestra pit to the apron of the stage – came when “my orchestra went on tour in Europe and I saw a West End production of West Side Story.” At that moment, she said, “I knew that was what I wanted to do.”

Covington explains: “My mom was with me and she said afterward, ‘I saw you sitting on the edge of your seat the entire time.’ She knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

When the tour was over, Covington went back to her high school, where she became more involved in student theatrical productions. She went on to Belmont University in Nashville to pursue a bachelor’s degree in music and musical theatre. In college, she said, “I decided I was burned out on violin, but theatre was one thing I could not live without. So I decided to reroute my life.”

In college she participated in a series of shows: “Bye Bye Birdie, 42^nd Street, Crazy for You, Smokey Joe’s Café, Hello, Dolly!, Oklahoma! – we did two musicals a year and we stayed pretty busy. Raisin in the Sun was my only straight play while I was in college.”

Covington’s professional career began when she went to the Southeastern Theatre Conference, which, she explained, was like “a mass audition.” Each performer had 90 seconds to sing and do a monologue. As a result, she was invited to do an audition for a non-Equity touring company of Thoroughly Modern Millie. “I was so excited,” she said. “We were on the road for ten months. We closed after the matinee on June 11 in Newark, New Jersey, and I moved to New York City that night.”

Once in New York, Covington signed up with an agent, and “that allowed me to get going professionally.” And fast, too: “I started a production of Ain’t Misbehavin’ in September.” Covington’s other credits include Aida and Hair.

Covington came to the cast of Mamma Mia! through her agent. She auditioned in February 2007 and was added to the cast in March. “I am so thankful to be here,” she said. “I’ve been on the road with [this show] for a year and three months.”

The engagement at the National Theatre provides Covington with her first opportunity in years to visit the Nation’s Capital. “My middle school took a trip to Washington,” she said. “I’m excited to go back, because I’ve never experienced anything like the Fourth of July in D.C.” The contrast with Independence Day a year ago will be sharp: “Last year for the Fourth, we were in Canada. So we’re going from it not being a holiday to where it’s the mecca of celebration!”

Traveling with a show means living out of a suitcase, which can be a drain. “It’s hard to sleep in different hotel rooms,” said Covington, but “you try to keep healthy. I try to eat as well as I can. I also go running at the gym, lift weights, and try to walk around as much as possible.”

What does Covington think of Mamma Mia!? “It’s the most fun you will have in the theatre in one night. The energy is crazy, and the audience is on their feet,” from start to finish. “It’s so exciting.”

One might think that cast members of the stage show of Mamma Mia! might be worried about competition from the film. Not at all, says Covington. “We’re very excited about seeing the movie and how they do it.”

There are currently eleven productions of Mamma Mia! running concurrently around the world (nine permanent productions and two tours). The original cast recording of Mamma Mia! is available on Decca Broadway. For information about Mamma Mia! around the world, visit www.mamma-mia.com.

Tickets for Mamma Mia! may be purchased now through Telecharge only at Telecharge.com or by calling (800) 447-7400. Tickets are priced $46.50 to $91.50 plus service charge, with a limited number of premium seats available at $151.50. Tickets go on sale at the National Theatre box office Tuesday, May 27. For groups of 20 or more, call (866) 276-2947. For more information, call (202) 628-6161 or visit www.nationaltheatre.org.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Poodle Beach comes this summer blockbuster:

Gay Zombies - Watch more free videos

Will you be next?

Tainted Tomatoes

Salmonella is still in the news. Reuters reported earlier today:

U.S. food safety officials on Wednesday said more than 350 people have fallen ill in a Salmonella outbreak linked to certain types of tomatoes.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 383 people in 30 states have been infected with Salmonella Saintpaul, a rare strain of the bacteria.

The most recent report of onset is June 5 and at least 48 people have been hospitalized, CDC said.

Yesterday, the New York Times noted:

The Food and Drug Administration may never be able to pinpoint the origin of salmonella-tainted tomatoes that have sickened hundreds of people, an agency official said Wednesday.

“We may not ultimately know the farm where these came from,” Dr. David Acheson, the agency’s associate commissioner for foods, told reporters in a conference call. “Some trace-backs that we thought were looking pretty good have been falling apart.”

Dr. Acheson said he remained optimistic, but added, “I’m trying to be realistic.”

The agency is investigating a cluster of nine people who ate tomatoes at the same restaurant chain, but has not disclosed the chain’s name or location.

Finding the source may ultimately prove irrelevant as well as fruitless. (Can tomatoes be fruitless? That may be an oxymoron. But I digress.)

Last week in the Chicago Tribune, the former head of the FDA's office of biotechnology, Dr. Henry I. Miller, lamented:

Unfortunately, produce growers cannot protect us 100 percent of the time. A several-month-old outbreak of food poisoning first linked to a rare strain of bacteria called Salmonella Saintpaul in raw tomatoes is tied to at least 160 cases of illness in 16 states in the West, Midwest and Northeast.

Modern farming operations—especially the larger ones—already employ strict standards designed to keep food free of pathogens. And most often they're effective.

But because agriculture is an outdoor activity and subject to all manner of unpredictable challenges, there are limits to how safe we can make it. If the goal is to make a cultivated field completely safe from microbial contamination, the only definitive solution is to pave it over and build a parking lot on it. But we'd only be trading very rare agricultural mishaps for fender-benders.

Dr. Miller, who is the co-author (with Gregory Conko) of The Frankenfood Myth, suggests there are ways of building confidence in the food supply while making it safer:

In the longer term, technology has an important role—or more accurately, it would have if only the organic food advocates and other food-kooks would permit it.

Irradiation of food is an important, safe and effective tool that has been vastly underused, largely due to opposition from the organic food lobby and to government over-regulation. "If even 50 percent of meat and poultry consumed in the United States were irradiated, the potential impact of food-borne disease would be a reduction [of] 900,000 cases and 300 deaths [a year]," according to Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota.

This point reminded me of an article I once wrote (history lesson alert) about the benefits of food irradiation. An early version appeared in The New York City Tribune in 1989; the version that appears below ran in The Metro Herald in August 1993:

The Benefits of Food Irradiation
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

Nearly 40 percent of the poultry sold in the United States contains deadly salmonella bacteria. According to Consumers' Research magazine, 40,000 cases of salmonella infections are reported each year, though experts believe this is only the tip of the iceberg—the actual number could be between 400,000 and four million. At least 500 people die each year from salmonella infections.

Salmonella is present in a wide range of food products—chicken, beef, pork, shellfish, raw milk, eggs, and fish. It is almost impossible to avoid. A relatively safe, cheap, and simple method to prevent salmonella infections, however, is now available: ionized food processing, also known as "food irradiation."

Because "radiation" is the Freddie Krueger of the anti-consumer network—the nightmare of those groups founded and funded by Ralph Nader as well as all manner of anti-nuclear activist groups—ionized food processing has not yet been fully accepted by American consumers. Still, after more than 35 years of tests and experiments, we know more about food irradiation than almost any other form of food preservation.

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations recommends ionized food processing—which uses low levels of safe radiation to break down the DNA of infectious bacteria and fungi—as a means of preserving food for the hungry people of the Third World.

USA Weekend magazine reported recently (August 20-22, 1993) that the beef industry may begin to use ionization techniques if a study it is currently conducting shows consumer support for the process. Beef producers probably have nothing to worry about. When Florida approved the sale of ionized food, one Miami supermarket chain, Lorenzo's, began selling irradiated food at premium prices—and customers, pleased by its longer shelf life, quickly bought up all the stock.

Still, fearmongering and irrational beliefs about radiation have prevented the general use of food ionization, to the disadvantage of American consumers. David Rothbard, president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a grass-roots consumers' organization, has noted: "Opponents of this technology are well organized and have succeeded in misleading the public, as well as many of our elected officials. Relying on flawed studies that have been rejected by almost every credible scientist, these opponents have used scare tactics to block the widespread use of this needed technology."

CFACT and two other groups, the American Council on Science and Health and the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, have begun a nationwide campaign to encourage use of ionized food preservation. These groups work to educate consumers and grocers across the United States about ionized food preservation. Their message includes these points:

Food irradiation delays spoilage. We lose millions of dollars worth of produce and meats each year due to spoilage. Ionizing radiation can delay the spoilage of highly perishable fresh fish and shellfish, and prolong the shelf life of fruits like strawberries.

Food irradiation is a substitute for toxic pesticides. The American Council on Science and Health reports that "low-dose irradiation can kill insects in grains and other stored foods" and can substitute for fumigants like EDB (now banned by EPA regulations) that are hazardous to farm workers and food handlers.

Food irradiation eliminates trichinosis hazards in pork.

Food irradiation kills salmonella and other infectious germs.

Despite all these advantages, some vocal opposition to ionized food processing still exists. Explains Craig Rucker, executive director of CFACT: "While public demonstrations have intimidated some grocers to boycott ‘irradiated' food, the more serious obstacles to advancing the technology lie in the state legislatures. Most states have passed laws requiring companies to label ionized foods with the word ‘irradiated.'" The clear purpose of this legislation, he adds, "is to saddle ionized food with a negative nuclear connotation." (David Rothbard asks, "Why not just make the labels carry a picture of a mushroom cloud?")

Alaska, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, and other states are considering even more extreme legislation that would ban the sale and distribution of ionized foods; Maine, New York, and New Jersey have already instituted sales bans. These laws carry harsh penalties for offenders.

Fears of contamination from food irradiation are as foolish as fears about contamination from a microwave oven, a common household appliance. USA Weekend notes that despite opposition from some groups like the Beyond Beef campaign, "tests show no ill effects of irradiation." Every form of cooking is, in essence, a form of radiation. A barbecue uses the radiation from flames; sun-dried raisins use the radiation from the sun's rays; smoked salmon is preserved with the radiation of burning hickory; an egg is poached with electric stovetop radiation. To deny American consumers inexpensive, safe, and disease-free fruits, meats, and vegetables on the basis of anti-nuclear hysteria is simply bad policy.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Richard Sincere, vice chairman of the Libertarian Party of Virginia, is a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in the 49th District (Arlington County).

To be sure, irradiation is not a panacea that will prevent all food-borne illnesses, as Miller notes in his Chicago Tribune piece. (It will not destroy toxins produced by bacteria even as it destroys the bacteria themselves.) Still, Miller adds:

There is technology available today that could inhibit microorganisms' ability to grow within plant cells and block the synthesis of the bacterial toxins. This technology also can produce antibodies that can be administered to infected patients to neutralize the toxins and produce effective treatments for diarrhea, the primary symptom of food poisoning.

This solution may find its own opposition, however, because it involves recombinant DNA technology, also known as gene-splicing or genetic modification.

Who knew that Mary Shelley was really writing metaphorically about the attack of the killer tomatoes?

Hymn for a Sunday Evening

Sixty years ago tonight, television history was made. Or, perhaps, it would be better to say, television history began.

Philo Farnsworth and Lee DeForest aside, the raw cultural power of television as an entertainment medium arguably sprang forth from a show that premiered on Sunday, June 20, 1948, from a midtown Manhattan theatre that now serves as the home of The Late Show with David Letterman.

Yes, it was on that night that a newspaper columnist with no discernible talent as a performer became the most influential prime time television host of the twentieth century. Gossip columnist Ed Sullivan took the helm of a variety program called Toast of the Town and made Sunday night the first "must see TV" for the American family.

Over 23 years on the air, Sullivan brought opera stars, Broadway musicals, classical pianists, and Shakespearean actors into our homes -- along with jugglers, acrobats, plate-spinners, folk dancers, and a mouse called Topo Gigio.

So influential was the Sullivan show that it could make or break a Broadway musical.

In his memoir, The Street Where I Live, lyricist and librettist Alan Jay Lerner explains how bringing the stars of Camelot to the Ed Sullivan Show brought that production back from the brink of disaster. CBS was an investor in Camelot, which made what happened all the more significant.

"I have always had one way of judging if a play has gotten over or not," wrote Lerner:

If at ten o'clock on the morning after the opening there is a line at the box office window, the play is a hit. If there is not -- trouble is afoot. At ten o'clock I called the theatre. Trouble was afoot. But we still had an enormous advance sale and unquestionably the play would have a run. But how long? Nobody knew.

William Paley, the head of CBS, commissioned a Nielsen survey that concluded the "show could not possibly run past May."

The play had opened in December 1960, and the advance sale was based largely on the reputation of My Fair Lady, which had, like Camelot, been written by Lerner and Loewe, directed by Moss Hart, and starred Julie Andrews, as well as the distinguished Welsh actor, Richard Burton. The first few weeks floated on that advance. But Lerner continued:

I returned in February to a bleak Camelot. There was hardly any window sale at all and people were walking out of the theatre not by the dozens, but some nights by as much as two to three hundred. The album was rising slowly in the charts, but the word-of-mouth was not good and the chances of recovering the investment seemed infinitesimal.

The situation seemed hopeless. But, as Lerner put it,

And then came the miracle.

Three weeks before, Ed Sullivan, who then had the most popular variety show on television, had decided to do a full hour devoted to Lerner and Loewe. He had honored other composers and lyricists in the past and, in fact, it was the second time he had so honored us. The occasion was the fifth anniversary of My Fair Lady. The program usually consisted of a scene or two from whatever show the authors may have had running at the time, and a medley of their previous hits. When Ed, Fritz, and I were having a meeting to discuss the content of the show, I asked if we might be allowed to routine it ourselves. Ed, one of the most gracious gentlemen in television, gave us carte blanche.

It had always been the custom to do only the briefest possible moments from a current play, in order not to give too much of it away. What I had in mind was to do very little from My Fair Lady and then spend the last twenty minutes doing all the best songs and scenes from Camelot, much more than had ever been prsented before from any play running on Broadway.

The Sullivan Show was Sunday night. During the previous week the cast not only rehearsed the T.V. show but, under Moss's direction, the cuts and changes in the play as well. On the television show, Goulet sang "If Ever I Would Leave You"; Julie sang "Where Are the Simple Joys of Maidenhood?"; Richard did "Camelot"; and he and Julie together did "What Do the Simple Folk Do?" All in costume. And they were a smash.

The following morning I was awakened by a phone call from an excited manager at the Majestic Theatre. "You better come down here," he said, "and look at this." "Look at what?" I asked. He answered, "Just come and see what's going on at this box office." I got to the theatre as quickly as I could. For the first time there was a line halfway down the block.

That night the audience came to the theatre and saw the vastly improved musical that Moss had rehearsed the week before. And at eleven-fifteen the curtain came down! The reaction and the applause were overwhelming. The people came up the aisles raving.

Camelot was finally a hit.

Given Sullivan's background as a journalist who wrote mostly about Broadway and the entertainment world, it should come as no surprise that, when he came to television, he became Broadway's biggest booster. So big, in fact, that "Ed Sullivan" is the primary lyric of a song in the 1960 musical, Bye Bye Birdie, called "Hymn for a Sunday Evening." (In a case of life imitating art, Paul Lynde sang that song on The Ed Sullivan Show on June 12, 1960; the other guests that night included Dick Van Dyke as well as Louis Prima and Keely Smith.)

Two of the guests on the first episode of Toast of the Town were Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. No doubt they tried to resuscitate their failed experiment of a show, Allegro, which was then in its death throes. (It closed weeks later, on July 10, after only 315 performances -- a major disappointment after the blockbuster status of Oklahoma!, which had closed three weeks later after a five-year run, and Carousel, which enjoyed 890 performances.) Or perhaps they were plugging a show they hadn't written, but produced: Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, which was in the midst of a three-year engagement of nearly 1,150 performances.

Television audiences who came upon Toast of the Town that first night would have seen the comedy team of Martin and Lewis -- Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, that is. And another comedy team, not so familiar to us now, called Goodman and Kirkwood. Other guests were John Kokoman, Kathryn Lee, Monica Lewis, Eugene List, and a dance troupe called "The Toastettes."

The Ed Sullivan Show went off the air on May 30, 1971, with a Memorial Day special. Generations of TV viewers have grown up without it, unless they have been fortunate enough to see individual episodes on DVD. (One set available for purchase, for example, includes the four episodes that featured the Beatles, whose debut on the Ed Sullivan Show was the biggest television event between Elvis' first appearance on that show and the moon landing -- which happened on a Sunday night (July 20, 1969), preempting Sullivan in favor of Neil Armstrong.) Sullivan's imprimatur made both Elvis and the Beatles (as well as the Rolling Stones, The Doors, and other rock acts) acceptable to Middle America.

While decidedly middlebrow in its approach, the Ed Sullivan Show brought highbrow culture into American homes along with the low-brow arts that appealed to the groundlings. Adults and children could watch together and know that, if what they were watching now is unsatisfying, they could wait five minutes and something more enjoyable would come along.

It's hard to believe it's been six decades.

Silent Flows the Don?

From Novosti, the Russian News and Information Agency:

A statue is to be unveiled to an enema at a health center in the southern Russia's town of Zheleznovodsk, the center director said on Monday.

The 1.5 meter-high bronze monument, weighing 350 kilograms (771.6 pounds), portrays "three angel-like children carrying above their heads a big pear-like enema," the Alexander Kharchenko said.

"This will be the first monument to an enema in the world," he said, adding that the initiative to erect the monument was proposed by the center's administration, where hundreds of similar procedures are carried out every day.

"It is high time a monument to an enema was erected," he said.

Considering all the odd things along America's highways and byways, it's rather surprising that the Russians erected the first enema monument.

At least we beat them to the moon.

Redpath Certified for Senate Ballot

The U.S. Senate race in Virginia now has a fourth official candidate: Libertarian Bill Redpath has been certified by the State Board of Elections. His name will appear on the ballot along with Democrat Mark Warner, Republican Jim Gilmore, and Independent Green Gail Parker.

Redpath is the national chairman of the Libertarian Party; he was re-elected to a second term at the LP's national convention in Denver over Memorial Day weekend. That same convention nominated Bob Barr of Georgia as the party's presidential candidate.

The Redpath campaign will be issuing a news release soon with more information about the ballot certification.

Doing It Later

Yesterday's "Sunday Source" section of the Washington Post has what appears to be an informative article about procrastination and how to overcome it.

It looks so interesting, I've decided to set it aside to read later, when I have some extra time.

Liveblogging the Tony Awards

Tonight's the night. After a season of ups and downs, the rivals are meeting tonight in a single arena to decide who will be the ultimate winner. Competition is fierce, of course; it is every year.

I'm prepared, too. I just returned from Kroger with an eight-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a package of chicken wings. I'll be settling into my easy chair to watch television, uninterrupted, for the next three hours.

The broadcast channels know what a big night this is, too, with all of them deferring to CBS. The CW has reruns of Everybody Hates Chris and Aliens in America. The local PBS affiliate is having a pledge drive. Fox has reruns of The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, and American Dad. NBC has a Saturday Night Live prime-time clip show, and ABC is running some basketball game.

That's because America is focused on the Tony Awards. Broadway's big night is here, hosted by The View's Whoopi Goldberg.

Isn't that worthy of live blogging?

8:03 p.m.: A production number from Disney's The Lion King (coming soon to Washington for the first time, at the Kennedy Center) opens the show. This season marked the show's tenth year on Broadway.

8:04 p.m.: Whoopi takes the stage in a crab costume from Disney's The Little Mermaid. The opening credits begin.

8:06 p.m.: Whoopi says, "Welcome to the 62nd Annual Tony Awards." She announces that there will be excerpts from shows that are not nominated (e.g., Young Frankenstein). She introduces the first presenter, Laurence Fishburne, and takes an unnecessary dig at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (eliciting some boos from the audience). (She implies that Thomas is not "black.")

8:08 p.m.: Fishburne presents the award for best featured actress in a play. The winner is Rondi Reed for August: Osage County.

8:11 p.m.: John Waters takes the stage. "Yes, I'm back. Can you believe it?" He's introducing a musical number from Cry-Baby, which is based on his film of the same name. He wonders if "there are actually prisoners watching the Tony show tonight. Talk about a new minority!"

8:15 p.m.: Musical number from the first nominated musical, Cry-Baby, ends.

8:20 p.m.: A spotlight on Jersey Boys, winner of best musical in 2006.

8:21 p.m.: Backstage with Whoopi, pointing out that viewers can go to CBS.com to see the "Thank You Cam."

8:22 p.m.: Laura Linney presents the award for best featured actor in a play. The winner is Jim Norton for The Seafarer. It is his first Tony. He shouts: "I love New York!"

8:25 p.m.: Adam Duritz of Counting Crows announces the number from Passing Strange, set in an Amsterdam coffee house.

8:36 p.m.: Two-time Tony winner John Lithgow presents the Tony for best direction of a musical. The winner is Bartlett Sher for the first Broadway revival of South Pacific.

8:39 p.m.: Jack Klugman, who was in the original cast of Gypsy, for which he was nominated for a Tony, introduces a number from the latest revival of that show. Patti Lupone sings "Everything's Coming Up Roses," perhaps the most frightening song every sung by a mother to her daughter. (After seeing this, I really want to see Lupone's "Rose's Turn.")

8:45 p.m.: A number from 1988's Phantom of the Opera, with Whoopi as Christine.

8:51 p.m.: We return from a commercial break to the announcement of the special Tonys given earlier this evening to Robert Russell Bennett (posthumously) and the Chicago Shakespeare Company, as well as to best choreographer, best book of a musical, best orchestrations, best revival of a play (Boeing-Boeing).

8:52 p.m.: Big Brother's Julie Chen looks back at "the year in plays."

8:54 p.m.: Tony winner Duncan Sheik mentions how Stew won the best book of a musical award for Passing Strange, and presents the award for best score. The award goes to Lin-Manuel Miranda for In the Heights, the early favorite musical with 13 nominations. Miranda's acceptance speech is delivered as a rap. He says, "Mr. Sondheim, look, I made a hat/ where there never was a hat/and a Latin hat at that."

8:57 p.m.: Harry Connick, Jr., introduces a medley from South Pacific, which begins with the Seabee chorus singing "There Is Nothing Like a Dame." Then Paulo Szot sings "Some Enchanted Evening," followed by Kelli O'Hara and the female chorus with "A Wonderful Guy."

9:07 p.m.: A "Broadway Spotlight" on Legally Blonde; Whoopi flies in like (and as) Mary Poppins.

9:08 p.m.: Tony winner Kristin Chenoweth presents the award for featured actress in a musical. The winner is Laura Benanti for her role as Louise in Gypsy. She expresses surprise at seeing Arthur Laurents standing. "Stephen Sondheim," she says, "I just worship you. There are no other words." She describes her mother as "the anti-Mama Rose."

9:11 p.m.: Barry Bostwick, who was in the original Broadway cast of Grease, introduces a number from the revival of that show. The cast sings the title song, "Grease," which comes from the movie soundtrack, not the OCR. (Frankie Valli sang it -- words and music by Barry Gibb -- over the film's credits.) The medley also includes the finale, "We Go Together." So the cast gets to sing both the first and last numbers of the current revival.

9:21 p.m.: A Broadway Spotlight with the cast of the longest-running revival musical, Chicago.

9:22 p.m.: Brooke Shields takes the stage to present the Tony Award for best performance by featured actor in a musical. The winner is veteran Boyd Gaines, for Gypsy; this is his fourth Tony award after five nominations. "I am honored to be in this great American classic," he says, thanking the creators, Stephen Sondheim, the late Jule Styne, and his director, Arthur Laurents.

9:25 p.m.: Oscar winner Marisa Tomei, now on Broadway in Top Girls, offers a taste of the new musicals "that have eight nominations among them," starting with The Little Mermaid. Faith Prince sings a number from A Catered Affair. Megan Mullaly sings to Shuler Hensley in a number from The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein. (This segment seems an attempt by the award show's producers to spotlight tourist-friendly musicals that failed to get nominated in the "best" category.)

9:30 p.m.: I notice that the Internet Broadway Data Base (ibdb.com) is unusually slow in loading tonight.

9:35 p.m.: A Broadway Spotlight on George Wendt and the cast of Hair Spray. Then we get a look behind the scenes at the American Theatre Wing, featuring young actors from current musicals.

9:36 p.m.: Whoopi returns. She introduces a scene from the first nominee for best play, August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts, followed by a scene from Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, and one from Conor MacPherson's The Seafarer. Finally, she introduces a scene from Patrick Barlow's The 39 Steps.

9:42 p.m.: Gabriel Byrne presents the award for best director of a play. The winner is Anna D. Shapiro for August: Osage County. She has a tattoo on her upper right arm, not something you expect to see on a Tony-winning director. She pays tribute to the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago and her parents. She also thanks her six nieces and nephews, "who don't care about any of this; they really don't. They just wanted tickets to Little Mermaid. And I got them."

9:46 p.m.: A scene from Spamalot with Whoopi as the Lady of the Lake; commercial break follows.

9:52 p.m.: A Broadway Spotlight on Mamma Mia!, which comes to Washington's National Theatre later this month.

9:53 p.m.: Mary-Louise Parker takes the stage to present the award for best performance by a leading actor in a play. Despite her flat reading off the teleprompter, the winner is Mark Rylance for Boeing-Boeing. (In announcing nominee Patrick Stewart, she properly says "the Scottish Play" rather than Macbeth; to do otherwise inside a theatre, even inside Radio City Music Hall, would be to invite disaster.) Rylance wins for his Broadway debut and gives a dry, droll acceptance speech.

9:56 p.m.: Emmy winner Alec Baldwin presents the award for best performance by a leading actress in a play. The winner is Deanna Dunagan for August: Osage County.

9:58 p.m.: IBDB is slower than it has ever been.

10:00 p.m.: Whoopi introduces Lin-Manuel Miranda, who begins a number from In the Heights, joined by the rest of the cast. (Good timing; you don't want viewers to switch channels at the top of the hour.) John Kander has said he greatly admires Miranda's music for In the Heights; I'm not sure I could sit through two hours of rap-like recitative.

10:05 p.m.: CBS runs a commercial for Mamma Mia!, the film version of the long-running London- and Broadway musical. That movie opens mere days after the show arrives at the National Theatre in D.C.

10:09 p.m.: The design awards, presented earlier this evening, are rapidly announced to the TV audience. Do they really think that anyone watching the Tonys doesn't really care about these important awards?

10:10 p.m.: A non-nude Daniel Radcliffe and Equus co-star Richard Griffiths (also non-nude) present the award for best new play. The winner is, "as if by magic," August: Osage County. Playwright Tracy Letts accepts the award along with a large crowd of producers, cast, and backers. Letts says "I don't know all these people. I assume they are associated with the play." He adds: "This beats the hell out of auditioning for JAG." He thanks the producers for doing a remarkable thing: "They decided to produce an American play on Broadway with theatre actors!"

10:14 p.m.: Looking like he just stepped out of a production of Fiddler on the Roof as Tevye, Tony winner Mandy Patinkin accepts a special Tony award for lifetime achievement for Stephen Sondheim. Because the recipient could not be present, Patinkin reads a message from Sondheim, who thanks his collaborators. Sondheim says, "I would also share this award with Hal Prince, but he has one already."

10:16 p.m.: Patinkin goes on to mention the original production of Sunday in the Park with George, and introduces scenes from the new Roundabout Theatre Company revival. Jenna Russell and Daniel Evans sing "Move On." (I last saw Evans in his Olivier-winning turn as Charley in the Donmar Warehouse production of Merrily We Roll Along.) Am I alone in this observation, or does Evans look like Andrew Sullivan before Andrew grew a beard?

10:21 p.m.: A scene from last year's winner for best musical, Spring Awakening, with Whoopi and the cast; commercial break.

10:26 p.m.: A Broadway Spotlight on Avenue Q.

10:27 p.m.: Glenn Close presents the award for best revival of a musical. The nominees are Grease, Gypsy, South Pacific, and Sunday in the Park with George. The award goes to South Pacific. Producer Andre Bishop accepts the award. He thanks the daughters of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and Ted Chapin of the R&H Organization.

10:30 p.m.: Lily Tomlin takes the stage to the strains of "Put on a Happy Face." She introduces a scene from best-musical nominee Xanadu. She said she saw it the other night and "I L-M-A-O." She is obviously having problems reading the teleprompter. Tony nominee Kerry Butler, Tony Roberts, Cheyenne Jackson, and the cast sing "Don't Walk Away." Who would have thought that Xanadu, a campy 1980 movie with Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John could one day become a Tony-nominated, hit Broadway musical?

10:40 p.m.: A classic Tony moment: Madonna complains about a short microphone and says, "I'm being punished for not coming to rehearsal today."

10:41 p.m.: Whoopi presents the original company of Rent, beginning with Anthony Rapp, who in turn introduces the current cast in a production number, "La Vie Boheme." He then brings in the original cast to join him. Of course, they mention how Jonathan Larson died of an aortic aneurysm on the day of the first public preview of the show. Of course, they sing "Seasons of Love."

10:46 p.m.: It's Liza! Her lisp is more audible than ever as she presents the award for best performance by a leading actor in a musical. The Tony Award goes to Brazilian baritone Paulo Szot for South Pacific.

10:49 p.m.: Tony winner (for Curtains) David Hyde-Pierce thanks Rob Ashford for "giving me the greatest dance on Broadway ... unfinished business from last year." He presents the award for leading actress in a musical. The winner is Patti Lupone for Gypsy. This is her second Tony; her first came in 1980 for Evita. She sends out her love to her husband, Matt, and their son, Joshua. She thanks everyone who has helped her in the past 35 years. She calls Arthur Laurents "an inspiration to all of us in the theatre." She even thanks the ghosts of the St. James Theater (and there must be many, considering what's played there before). She yells at the orchestra, which is trying to play her off, "Shut up! It's been 29 years!" She talks over "There's No Business Like Show Business" before finally saying good night.

10:53 p.m.: Whoopi joins the cast of the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line in "One." Mario Lopez is at the front of the line. I knew he was in the cast; I hadn't realized he was playing Zach. (That's the closest thing to a non-dancing role in the show; Michael Douglas played it in that dreadful Richard Attenborough movie version.)

10:54 p.m.: IBDB is still slow. Very slow.

10:57 p.m.: Whoopi returns to the microphone to present the award for best new musical. "Seconds from now," she says, "this stage will be filled with producers." The big winner of the night is In the Heights. Producer Jill Furman accepts the award with a throng of producers and cast members.

11:00 p.m.: Whoopi calls this "the greatest night of an actor's life." She encourages the audience to "come to New York to see a Broadway show." The closing credits begin. CBS runs a commercial for "the summer's guilty pleasure," Swingtown.

User Fees to Fund Transportation

The idea of the superiority of user fees over taxes as a means of funding public services is widely held by libertarians and others who advocate free-market solutions to community problems. To others, however, user fees are an exotic concept and therefore suspect.

Seeing an article in the opinion pages of the Charlottesville Daily Progress this morning that supports user fees as the best means of financing transportation in Virginia came as an intellectually pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, the article -- by Old Dominion University economist James V. Koch -- does not appear on the Daily Progress web site (or at least it's not easy to find, if it is there). Fortunately, the same article appeared on Saturday in the Daily Press of Newport News, and it does appear on that newspaper's web site.

Under the headline, "For road funding, user fees just make sense," Koch writes:

I don't give it a second thought when I'm asked to pay an entrance fee to enter Yellowstone National Park. After all, the park's resources and facilities must be maintained and there is elemental justice attached to this fee because I'm the person using the park, not someone 1,000 miles away. Similarly, I don't object to paying an admission fee to Old Dominion University basketball games, or paying for a spot to park on campus, even though we all know ODU is a publicly assisted institution. Once again, I use the services and receive the benefits, so why shouldn't I bear most of the cost?

Somehow the fundamental justice associated with user fees gets lost when we begin to talk about how to pay for our roads. Many individuals believe they should not have to pay for the extent to which they drive on public roadways even though they know their own use gradually causes our roads to deteriorate and even though they know these same roads may be essential to their keeping their current jobs, or even to drive to church.

I can understand (though not completely agree with) someone who argues, "I don't even own a car, so I shouldn't pay." While I'd argue every citizen benefits from an efficient road system (even bed-ridden individuals rely upon our road system to deliver their food and medicine), one can understand the argument of an individual who doesn't want to pay for things she chooses not to use.

That's why transportation user fees are so attractive (at least relative to the alternatives). If I'm going to pay for something, I'd like it to be an item that I use and value rather than something I care nothing about. Transportation user fees (tolls, gas taxes) can be avoided completely by someone who chooses not to drive, or avoided partially by someone who decides to drive less, use a more fuel-efficient car, carpool, cyber-commute or use public transportation.

Dr. Koch also points out:

...user fees have other benefits. They'll cause us to drive fewer miles. This will moderate highway congestion, reduce highway deaths, and even dampen carbon-dioxide emissions. We'll be stimulated to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles. Not such a bad combination! Note that increasing the state's income tax or sales tax, or imposing a grab bag of other taxes, to pay for transportation improvements would yield virtually none of these benefits.

He concludes:

...the real question is how we should pay for repairing our potholes and building the new roads we need. User fees easily are the best way to go. They provide us with incentives to change our behavior (and thereby avoid paying so much) even while they raise revenue. True, user fees (especially gas taxes) don't have lots of political sex appeal, but then legitimate, long-term solutions to tough problems seldom do. It would be a mistake to kid ourselves that somehow we will find a painless solution to our transportation challenges that will magically be paid for by "someone else."

A variety of elected officials seem to be pursuing that strategy. Let's get real. There's no free lunch to be found in the transportation arena. Let's increase user fees and stop digging our transportation hole even deeper.

There's little in Professor Koch's article with which I could disagree. The entire piece should be read by every member of the General Assembly who will be participating in the special session on transportation issues later this month.

Addenda to the 'Getting High' Series

Back in February, I posted four videos I called the "Getting High" series. Two of the videos were from Wisconsin (the top of the state capitol, the peak of Rib Mountain), one was from Michigan's Upper Peninsula (Copper Peak ski flying hill), and the last was from Los Angeles (the Getty museum complex).

I have two more additions to the "Getting High" series.

The first is archival footage I found in some old home movies taken by my grandfather, Chester J. Michalak, in the early 1960s. This film was made while flying over the resort community of Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, with its extensive chain of lakes. My best guess is that this dates from August 1960, but it could be a year or two older or younger.

The second is more recent. In March 2007, Richard Morrison and I made a trip to Las Vegas, and we visited the Hoover Dam, which rises from the depths of Black Canyon, impeding the Colorado River and creating Lake Mead. Some of the video is taken from inside the bowels of the dam, where the electrical generators are located, and some of it is from the edge of the canyon and from the top of the roadway that traverses the dam itself.

Getting High in Wisconsin, Part III:



Getting High in Nevada, Part I:



Getting High in Nevada, Part II:

The videos from Nevada were taken just a few days after I purchased my digital video camera, so I was not as adept as I could have been in shooting the scenery. I have learned a lot since then, so I apologize for the intermittent shakiness and quick, unsteady zooms.

Looking into a Candidate's Soul

In their book Blinded by Might, Ed Dobson and Cal Thomas wrote "the marriage of religion and politics almost always compromises the gospel." On another occasion, Ed Dobson wrote:

The authority of the church is the power to change people and culture. By contrast, the authority of the government is the authority to punish wrongdoing and restrain evil. But the government has no power to change the hearts of evildoers; it can only incarcerate or execute them.

Daroid H. Morgan summarized one of the book's basic points in a review of Blinded by Might in the journal Christian Ethics Today:

The strength of this book is the repeated statement that it is only in the power of the Christian gospel, applied to the human heart, that transformation of people can take place. Legislation and manipulation of political position and power cannot change lives. The preeminent task of the Church is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Religious Right people have made a fatal mistake in making political power take precedence over the spiritual power latent in the Christian gospel.

Why is it, then, that Cal Thomas is now criticizing presidential candidate Barack Obama for holding non-orthodox theological opinions? Are Obama's personal religious beliefs about eschatology and personal salvation relevant to the office he seeks?

In contrast to his previous opinions on separating theology from politics, this week in his syndicated column, Thomas writes:

Mr. Obama has declared himself a committed Christian. He can call himself anything he likes, but there are certain markers among the evangelicals he is courting that one must meet in order to qualify for that label.

Some insight into Mr. Obama's "Christianity" comes from an interview he gave in 2004 to Chicago Sun-Times religion editor Cathleen Falsani for her book, "The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People."

"I'm rooted in the Christian tradition," said Mr. Obama. He then adds something most Christians will see as universalism: "I believe there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people."

Ms. Falsani correctly brings up John 14:6 (and how many journalists would know such a verse, much less ask a question based on it?) in which Jesus says of Himself, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." That sounds exclusive, but Mr. Obama says it depends on how this verse is heard. According to Ms. Falsani, Mr. Obama thinks that "all people of faith - Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone - know the same God." (Her words.)

Evangelicals and serious Catholics might ask if this is so, why did Jesus waste His time coming to Earth, suffering pain, rejection and crucifixion? If there are many ways to God, He might have sent down a spiritual version of table manners and avoided the rest.

Here's Mr. Obama telling Ms. Falsani, "The difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and proselytize. There's the belief, certainly in some quarters, that if people haven't embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they're going to hell." Ms. Falsani adds, "Obama doesn't believe he, or anyone else, will go to hell. But he's not sure he'll be going to heaven, either." Again, that is contrary to what evangelicals and most Catholics believe.

Here's Mr. Obama again: "I don't presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I've been a good father to them, and I see that I am transferring values that I got from my mother and that they're kind people and that they're honest people, and they're curious people, that's a little piece of heaven."

Any first-year seminary student could deconstruct such "works salvation" and wishful thinking. Mr. Obama either hasn't read the Bible, or if he has, doesn't believe it if he embraces such thin theological wisps.

Mr. Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Mr. Obama doesn't meet that requirement.

If Senator Obama were running for president of the United Church of Christ (the denomination to which he has belonged for the last two decades) rather than of the United States of America, scrutiny of his theological views would be both relevant and appropriate.

Similarly, it would not be appropriate -- nor would it matter -- what the views of the president of the UCC are with regard to the Hatch Act or who should be appointed as administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.

If the church should avoid being entangled in power politics, so should it avoid enquiries about what presidential candidates think about christology, missiology, and ecclesiology.

And, if Mr. Thomas is insistent on probing Obama's views on these subjects, he should direct his scrutiny equally to John McCain, Bob Barr, and the other presidential candidates. If Christian orthodoxy is a requirement for sitting in the Oval Office, the demand applies to all candidates for that seat, not just the one who has previously laid his heart bare on these topics.

How Congress Makes Us Fat

No doubt you have heard about the national obesity epidemic:

An estimated two of every three American adults, and more than one in six children and adolescents are considered overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The rates have been on the rise since the late 1980s after being relatively constant in the '60s and '70s, said Dr. Cynthia Ogden, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The percentage of adults who are obese -- defined as having a Body Mass Index of 30 or more -- has doubled to 31 percent, or some 60 million people, over the past two decades, Ogden said.

While ill-suited diets and lack of exercise are mostly to blame for weight gain in individuals, it is also true that our government creates disincentives to good health.

A perspicacious editorial in today's Washington Times points out how Congress lays the groundwork for such disincentives by plying agribusiness with subsidies pulled from the taxpayer's pocket.

Notes the Times:

A Twinkie costs 15 cents, and a Gala apple at a grocery store wears a price tag of $1.25 - despite the fact that each Twinkie ingredient goes through the process of being crushed, baked, fermented, refined and/or reacted into a totally unrecognizable goo or powder with a strange name - all for the sake of creating a simple snack cake. Meanwhile, an apple undergoes two steps: plant and pick.

So why does it cost more to produce an apple than a Twinkie?

Well, your friendly Capitol Hill lawmakers persist in passing a farm bill every five years that hurts the taxpayer, grocery shopper and the small farmer.

Congress passed the proposed $290 billion farm bill on May 22, over-riding President Bush's veto and setting the rules for the American food system for the next five years. Approximately two-thirds of the bill funds nutrition programs such as food stamps and about $40 billion is for farm subsidies. An additional $30 billion goes to farmers to idle their land as part of other environmental programs.

The problem lies in subsidizing crops like corn, soybeans, rice, cotton and wheat. Consequently, processed foods like the Twinkie - which consists of a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat - are scandalously cheap while the prices of healthy, unprocessed produce skyrocket.

The editorial asks the appropriate qui bono question:

So who actually benefits from the crop subsidies? The farm lobby likes to pretend that the small family farmer does, but that is not the case. Because subsidies are given based on level of production, mega-farms benefit the most. Though the latest farm bill attempts to limit this, it will add up to $26 billion in direct payments to mega-farms over the next five years.

It's been a long time since I've actually eaten a Twinkie -- at least the processed-food, creme-filled kind -- and I far prefer a Gala apple. (Actually, I prefer a Granny Smith or a Fuji, but Galas are tasty, too.) Now I understand why my grocery bill is so much higher now than it was when my basket was filled mostly with items from the snack aisle. (I can see the Google searches now: "cream-filled twinkie basket.")

So if anyone wants to know why the number one diet problem of the poor in America is not hunger but obesity, they need only look to Capitol Hill for an explanation.

For Flag Day

Today is Flag Day, which used to be celebrated as a national holiday commemorating the adoption of the design of the U.S. flag by the Continental Congress in 1777.

In honor of the occasion, I present this excerpt from the majority opinion in Texas v. Johnson, the landmark 1989 case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The majority included Justices William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy. (Scalia and Kennedy, of course, still sit on the court; the others are deceased.)

Delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Brennan wrote (in part):

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. See, e. g., Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S., at 55 -56; City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 804 (1984); Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 65 , 72 (1983); Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S. 455, 462 -463 (1980); FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S., at 745 -746; Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50, 63 -65, 67-68 (1976) (plurality opinion); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 16 -17 (1976); Grayned v. Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 115 (1972); Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 95 (1972); Bachellar v. Maryland, 397 U.S. 564, 567 (1970); O'Brien, 391 U.S., at 382 ; Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S., at 142 -143; Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S., at 368 -369.

We have not recognized an exception to this principle even where our flag has been involved. In Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576 (1969), we held that a State may not criminally punish a person for uttering words critical of the flag. Rejecting the argument that the conviction could be sustained on the ground that Street had "failed to show the respect for our national symbol which may properly be demanded of every citizen," we concluded that "the constitutionally guaranteed `freedom to be intellectually . . . diverse or even contrary,' and the `right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order,' encompass the freedom to express publicly one's opinions about our flag, including those opinions which are defiant or contemptuous." Id., at 593, quoting Barnette, 319 U.S., at 642 . Nor may the government, we have held, compel conduct that would evince respect for the flag. "To sustain the compulsory flag salute we are required to say that a Bill of Rights which guards the individual's right to speak his own mind, left it open to public authorities to compel him to utter what is not in his mind." Id., at 634. [491 U.S. 397, 415]

In holding in Barnette that the Constitution did not leave this course open to the government, Justice Jackson described one of our society's defining principles in words deserving of their frequent repetition: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." Id., at 642. In Spence, we held that the same interest asserted by Texas here was insufficient to support a criminal conviction under a flag-misuse statute for the taping of a peace sign to an American flag. "Given the protected character of [Spence's] expression and in light of the fact that no interest the State may have in preserving the physical integrity of a privately owned flag was significantly impaired on these facts," we held, "the conviction must be invalidated." 418 U.S., at 415 . See also Goguen, supra, at 588 (WHITE, J., concurring in judgment) (to convict person who had sewn a flag onto the seat of his pants for "contemptuous" treatment of the flag would be "[t]o convict not to protect the physical integrity or to protect against acts interfering with the proper use of the flag, but to punish for communicating ideas unacceptable to the controlling majority in the legislature").

In short, nothing in our precedents suggests that a State may foster its own view of the flag by prohibiting expressive conduct relating to it. 10 To bring its argument outside our [491 U.S. 397, 416] precedents, Texas attempts to convince us that even if its interest in preserving the flag's symbolic role does not allow it to prohibit words or some expressive conduct critical of the flag, it does permit it to forbid the outright destruction of the flag. The State's argument cannot depend here on the distinction between written or spoken words and nonverbal conduct. That distinction, we have shown, is of no moment where the nonverbal conduct is expressive, as it is here, and where the regulation of that conduct is related to expression, as it is here. See supra, at 402-403. In addition, both Barnette and Spence involved expressive conduct, not only verbal communication, and both found that conduct protected.

Texas' focus on the precise nature of Johnson's expression, moreover, misses the point of our prior decisions: their enduring lesson, that the government may not prohibit expression simply because it disagrees with its message, is not dependent on the particular mode in which one chooses to express an idea. 11 If we were to hold that a State may forbid flag burning wherever it is likely to endanger the flag's symbolic role, but allow it wherever burning a flag promotes that role - as where, for example, a person ceremoniously burns a dirty flag - we would be saying that when it comes to impairing the flag's physical integrity, the flag itself may be used as [491 U.S. 397, 417] a symbol - as a substitute for the written or spoken word or a "short cut from mind to mind" - only in one direction. We would be permitting a State to "prescribe what shall be orthodox" by saying that one may burn the flag to convey one's attitude toward it and its referents only if one does not endanger the flag's representation of nationhood and national unity.

We never before have held that the Government may ensure that a symbol be used to express only one view of that symbol or its referents. Indeed, in Schacht v. United States, we invalidated a federal statute permitting an actor portraying a member of one of our Armed Forces to "`wear the uniform of that armed force if the portrayal does not tend to discredit that armed force.'" 398 U.S., at 60 , quoting 10 U.S.C. 772(f). This proviso, we held, "which leaves Americans free to praise the war in Vietnam but can send persons like Schacht to prison for opposing it, cannot survive in a country which has the First Amendment." Id., at 63.

We perceive no basis on which to hold that the principle underlying our decision in Schacht does not apply to this case. To conclude that the government may permit designated symbols to be used to communicate only a limited set of messages would be to enter territory having no discernible or defensible boundaries. Could the government, on this theory, prohibit the burning of state flags? Of copies of the Presidential seal? Of the Constitution? In evaluating these choices under the First Amendment, how would we decide which symbols were sufficiently special to warrant this unique status? To do so, we would be forced to consult our own political preferences, and impose them on the citizenry, in the very way that the First Amendment forbids us to do. See Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S., at 466 -467.

There is, moreover, no indication - either in the text of the Constitution or in our cases interpreting it - that a separate juridical category exists for the American flag alone. Indeed, we would not be surprised to learn that the persons [491 U.S. 397, 418] who framed our Constitution and wrote the Amendment that we now construe were not known for their reverence for the Union Jack. The First Amendment does not guarantee that other concepts virtually sacred to our Nation as a whole - such as the principle that discrimination on the basis of race is odious and destructive - will go unquestioned in the marketplace of ideas. See Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). We decline, therefore, to create for the flag an exception to the joust of principles protected by the First Amendment.

It is not the State's ends, but its means, to which we object. It cannot be gainsaid that there is a special place reserved for the flag in this Nation, and thus we do not doubt that the government has a legitimate interest in making efforts to "preserv[e] the national flag as an unalloyed symbol of our country." Spence, 418 U.S., at 412 . We reject the suggestion, urged at oral argument by counsel for Johnson, that the government lacks "any state interest whatsoever" in regulating the manner in which the flag may be displayed. Tr. of Oral Arg. 38. Congress has, for example, enacted precatory regulations describing the proper treatment of the flag, see 36 U.S.C. 173-177, and we cast no doubt on the legitimacy of its interest in making such recommendations. To say that the government has an interest in encouraging proper treatment of the flag, however, is not to say that it may criminally punish a person for burning a flag as a means of political protest. "National unity as an end which officials may foster by persuasion and example is not in question. The problem is whether under our Constitution compulsion as here employed is a permissible means for its achievement." Barnette, 319 U.S., at 640 .

We are fortified in today's conclusion by our conviction that forbidding criminal punishment for conduct such as Johnson's will not endanger the special role played by our flag or the feelings it inspires. To paraphrase Justice Holmes, we submit that nobody can suppose that this one gesture of an unknown [491 U.S. 397, 419] man will change our Nation's attitude towards its flag. See Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 628 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting). Indeed, Texas' argument that the burning of an American flag "`is an act having a high likelihood to cause a breach of the peace,'" Brief for Petitioner 31, quoting Sutherland v. DeWulf, 323 F. Supp. 740, 745 (SD Ill. 1971) (citation omitted), and its statute's implicit assumption that physical mistreatment of the flag will lead to "serious offense," tend to confirm that the flag's special role is not in danger; if it were, no one would riot or take offense because a flag had been burned.

We are tempted to say, in fact, that the flag's deservedly cherished place in our community will be strengthened, not weakened, by our holding today. Our decision is a reaffirmation of the principles of freedom and inclusiveness that the flag best reflects, and of the conviction that our toleration of criticism such as Johnson's is a sign and source of our strength. Indeed, one of the proudest images of our flag, the one immortalized in our own national anthem, is of the bombardment it survived at Fort McHenry. It is the Nation's resilience, not its rigidity, that Texas sees reflected in the flag - and it is that resilience that we reassert today.

The way to preserve the flag's special role is not to punish those who feel differently about these matters. It is to persuade them that they are wrong. "To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 377 (1927) (Brandeis, J., concurring). And, precisely because it is our flag that is involved, one's response to the flag [491 U.S. 397, 420] burner may exploit the uniquely persuasive power of the flag itself. We can imagine no more appropriate response to burning a flag than waving one's own, no better way to counter a flag burner's message than by saluting the flag that burns, no surer means of preserving the dignity even of the flag that burned than by - as one witness here did - according its remains a respectful burial. We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.

I think it is important to include part of Justice Kennedy's concurring opinion, as well, because it expresses (especially in the first few paragraphs) some of the delicacy of addressing this issue -- the question of flag desecration -- when the Court knows how many Americans of goodwill find the practice repugnant, even when the law insists that such an expressive act is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Justice Kennedy -- who also wrote the majority opinion in this week's equally historic cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. Bush, which deal with the rights of prisoners held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- wrote in Texas v. Johnson:

I write not to qualify the words JUSTICE BRENNAN chooses so well, for he says with power all that is necessary to explain our ruling. I join his opinion without reservation, but with a keen sense that this case, like others before us from time to time, exacts its personal toll. This prompts me to add to our pages these few remarks.

The case before us illustrates better than most that the judicial power is often difficult in its exercise. We cannot here ask another Branch to share responsibility, as when the argument is made that a statute is flawed or incomplete. For we are presented with a clear and simple statute to be judged against a pure command of the Constitution. The outcome can be laid at no door but ours.

The hard fact is that sometimes we must make decisions we do not like. We make them because they are right, right [491 U.S. 397, 421] in the sense that the law and the Constitution, as we see them, compel the result. And so great is our commitment to the process that, except in the rare case, we do not pause to express distaste for the result, perhaps for fear of undermining a valued principle that dictates the decision. This is one of those rare cases.

Our colleagues in dissent advance powerful arguments why respondent may be convicted for his expression, reminding us that among those who will be dismayed by our holding will be some who have had the singular honor of carrying the flag in battle. And I agree that the flag holds a lonely place of honor in an age when absolutes are distrusted and simple truths are burdened by unneeded apologetics.

With all respect to those views, I do not believe the Constitution gives us the right to rule as the dissenting Members of the Court urge, however painful this judgment is to announce. Though symbols often are what we ourselves make of them, the flag is constant in expressing beliefs Americans share, beliefs in law and peace and that freedom which sustains the human spirit. The case here today forces recognition of the costs to which those beliefs commit us. It is poignant but fundamental that the flag protects those who hold it in contempt.

For all the record shows, this respondent was not a philosopher and perhaps did not even possess the ability to comprehend how repellent his statements must be to the Republic itself. But whether or not he could appreciate the enormity of the offense he gave, the fact remains that his acts were speech, in both the technical and the fundamental meaning of the Constitution. So I agree with the Court that he must go free.

When you fly the flag proudly today, or any other day, remember that your right to do so is only protected insofar as the right of someone else to burn the flag is protected as strongly.

Update: Who knew how timely this topic could become? An article posted on the Washington Times web site barely half an hour ago (at 7:33 p.m. EDT) notes:

Officials at a Northern California high school have reversed their decision to shut down a school newspaper that published a front-page photo of a student burning an American flag.

Shasta High School Principal Milan Woollard had said the newspaper and an accompanying journalism class would not operate next year after the "embarrassing" final issue of the student-run Volcano was published June 3. The issue also featured an editorial defending flag-burning as a form of speech protected under the First Amendment.

President Pays Tribute to Tim Russert

The political world has been shocked and saddened by the unexpected, sudden death of NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert, the Buffalo native who was moderator of Meet the Press since 1991.

Tributes have been many. As I write this, the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams has spent the entire half-hour broadcast with reminiscences from that network's correspondents, as well as print journalists like Al Hunt, Bob Woodward, and Sally Quinn.

Even while traveling overseas, President George W. Bush issued a statement:

Laura and I are deeply saddened by the sudden passing of Tim Russert. Those of us who knew and worked with Tim, his many friends, and the millions of Americans who loyally followed his career on the air will all miss him.

As the longest-serving host of the longest-running program in the history of television, he was an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades. Tim was a tough and hardworking newsman. He was always well-informed and thorough in his interviews. And he was as gregarious off the set as he was prepared on it.

Most important, Tim was a proud son and father, and Laura and I offer our deepest sympathies to his wife Maureen, his son Luke, and the entire Russert family. We will keep them in our prayers.

Update: I should have waited until the broadcast ended before hitting send. The last guest on the Nightly News was Ethel Kennedy, widow of RFK, whom I had not seen on television in forty years.

Brian Williams closed by noting that NBC will be preempting its regularly scheduled programming tonight to present an hour-long tribute to Tim Russert, beginning at 10:00 o'clock Eastern Time.

Mettez vos mains sur le volant!

An amusing viral video that has attracted almost 200,000 hits on YouTube in about three days turns out to be a publicity gimmick by a company that manufactures hands-free mobile telephone equipment.

The video, which appears under the misleading title "Kid fails driving test 5 times in a day," is a sort of "candid camera" prank, in which several California driving teachers are the targets of the joke.

Here's the video:

As you can see, the "kid" is not "fail[ing] his driving test," but rather is taking driving lessons from exasperated instructors.

Since the video ends with a plug for "Parrot.com," most people should have got the clue that this was a commercial production, and not some teenager playing amateur "Punk'd" with a hidden dashboard camera.

The truth came out in a FishbowlLA post earlier yesterday:

The video is part of a marketing strategy for a company called Parrot.com to raise the awareness of the new laws in California, as well as, to raise the brand awareness of their hands-free mobile devices in the US. Parrot funded the production of the video.

The video is not scripted. The company installed hidden cameras in the car and hired "John" to test the limits of these driving instructors using his cell phone.

Who is Parrot.com, you may ask?

According to its corporate web site,

Based in Paris and founded in 1994 by Henri Seydoux, its Chairman and CEO, Parrot S.A. is one of the profitable, fast-growing companies that have emerged from the "start-up" generation. Since its beginnings, Parrot's core competence has been the technologies for embedded noise-robust voice recognition and signal processing, with applications in mobile computing and mobile communications.

Parrot also hosts a web site called "ParrotSafeDriving.com," which provides a guide to hands-free driving legislation across North America. Among other things, it offers this useful map of U.S. states and Canadian provinces that prohibit (or are soon to prohibit) driving while using a cellphone or PDA or similar device:


This gives a whole new meaning to "red, blue, and purple states."

'Swingtown' and the Challenges of the 1970s

When Dick Cheney called the home stretch of the 1976 presidential campaign "the ten-day orgasm," he might have been referring to the new CBS-TV prime-time soap opera, Swingtown.

He wasn't, of course. Swingtown was 32 years in the future, and few people in October 1976 would have thought that a 21st-century TV drama about wife-swapping would turn out to be a weekly nostalgia trip for the leisure-suit generation.

For those who have not yet seen it, Swingtown may be the raciest show on broadcast television these days -- or ever. (I will admit that I seldom see nighttime soaps -- or even so-called "daytime drama" -- so my ability to judge the relative raciness ratio is limited.)

I expect this show will become a sort of guilty pleasure -- not just for me but for many others who came of age in the 1970s. Yet I hardly expected to like the show; from the promotions CBS ran in advance of the premiere on June 5, I thought I would find it too laughable to be watchable. I was wrong.

The test will be whether, unlike other TV shows that purport to be representative of a particular block of time, Swingtown remains true to its premise.

Both Happy Days and That '70s Show began as focused nostalgia exercises that promised to portray a specific time and place -- Happy Days in 1950s Milwaukee and That '70s Show in a fictional (coincidentally) Wisconsin town two decades later. In both cases, however, the producers lost sight of this sense of setting and devolved into typical sitcoms that could have been set at any time, in any place.

During its first season, Happy Days was meticulous about its setting. Shot with a single camera without a live audience, it had a dramatic feel of verisimilitude without losing its essential humor, which derived from its '50s-era situations. We knew we were in Milwaukee, for instance, because Earl Gillespie could be heard announcing the play-by-play of a Braves baseball game on the radio. Howard and Marion dealt with issues like racial prejudice in a sensitive yet realistic manner.

Yet even before Happy Days jumped the shark -- not the first TV show to do so, but the first to put a name to the phenomenon -- it began to be just another teen-oriented comedy, with less emphasis on the adults and on parent-child relationships and more on the outlandish antics of Richie, Ralph, and Potsie, who relied on Fonzie to rescue them from their predicaments. Any observable sense that this was the 1950s was lost by the third season.

So, too, with That '70s Show, whose first season was steeped in Seventies cultural and topical references. While music and costumes remained true to the premise throughout the show's run, by the third season it became detached from whatever grounding in the cultural milieu of the decade. It even trafficked in anachronisms: In one episode in which the kids visit Marquette University, the college walls are covered with banners for the "Golden Eagles," when everyone knows that the MU teams in the 1970s were named, in glorious political incorrectness, the Marquette Warriors.

Swingtown, therefore, has a challenge before it, which may be easier to meet because it is a drama rather than a comedy (although it has its comedic moments). One signal of its seriousness of purpose may be found in its costume room: A promotional video at the CBS web site says that the show has a collection of 10,000 pieces of period clothing (not counting accessories) ready to be used. (Some of those costumes look like they're straight out of this 1977 J.C. Penney catalog.)

Another challenge the producers face is that, despite the economic dislocation caused by a sudden spike in oil prices, the distrust of government caused by Watergate, and a general sense of malaise, the 1970s were -- in contrast with, say the 1960s -- dull.

Yanek Mieczkowski writes in his book, Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s:

With the nation's cities and campuses at peace, the political turmoil of the past decade was easy to forget. In an essay simply entitled "Sigh!" columnist Russell Baker wrote, "The nineteen-seventies are boring. The decade is already half over and its chief legacy is an engulfing swamp of boredom." Baker noted that "President Ford is boring, which is his chief political strength." But Baker added, "In the nineteen-sixties, of course, Americans hungered for boredom. A sleepy Government, some peace in the streets.... In all that turbulence, it seemed an unattainable dream of paradise. Now we may have it, and may even be enjoying it."

That is the climate from which Swingtown emerges. Its first episode is set during the weekend of July 2-4, 1976, and has all of the hallmarks of reaction to ennui: beer and bratwurst, Penthouse and pot, unabashed cocaine use, skinnydipping in Lake Michigan, and wife swapping.

Apropos of that holiday weekend, Mieczkowski continues:

The serenity, which was a welcome relief, was evident again the following summer during celebrations commemorating the nation's bicentennial. Douglas Bennett recalled that in 1976, while campaigning for Ford, he reminded audiences that less than two years earlier Americans "were angry ... we trusted nobody, and in the course of two years this president has restored a confidence. And this past Fourth of July was the bicentennial, hundreds and hundreds of people gathered at places around this nation, without incident -- and I think that is a direct tribute to the leadership of President Ford and the restoration of confidence, tranquility, and trust in our nation." Ford himself spoke of "a new spirit" in America that he observed during bicentennial celebrations.

That "new spirit" certainly manifests itself in Swingtown, but undoubtedly with details that would have made President Ford -- though maybe not his First Lady -- blush. In many ways, the "retrograde" Swingtown may be an antidote to two decades of puritanism that has predominated in American culture. Swingtown, perhaps, is a backlash against the backlash.

Put another way, Swingtown may be representing (in a carnal and vivid fashion) what Ford expressed during the Bicentennial celebrations and the political campaign that year. Mieczkowski again:

During the nation's bicentennial year, Ford often urged consecrating America's next hundred years to the individual, shifting focus away from government: "Now we are on the threshold of our third century. I see this as the century of individual freedom.... [That] means liberty from oppressive, heavy-handed bureaucratic government.... That is a goal we must achieve in our third century."

(We're still working on that. A warning label on that speech might have stated: "Some backsliding may occur.")

In terms of plot and character development on Swingtown, I am less interested in the interactions of the featured couples (Molly Parker and Jack Davenport as Susan and Bruce Miller; an often shirtless Grant Show and Lana Parrilla as Tom and Trina Decker; and Josh Hopkins and Miriam Shor as Roger and Janet Thompson) than I am in the subplot involving Susan and Bruce's son B.J. and his friend, Roger and Janet's son Ricky.

A viewer would have to be blind to miss the proto-gay relationship between these two teenagers. Watching the show with a friend of mine, we both reacted the same way to the body language and yearning looks that characterize the B.J./Ricky friendship. (It actually looks like B.J. might be abandoning his friend to explore his heterosexual side, but -- given the quality of the pilot's writing and direction -- I expect this to be a multifaceted plot development, with complications ensuing week by week.) The tableau of the Thompson family at the end of the pilot episode speaks volumes about the repressed emotional volcanism waiting to spew.

It was not until after watching the June 5 broadcast of Swingtown that I found this interview with the show's creator, Alan Poul, on the web site of The Advocate. Poul, who is openly gay, is asked by interviewer Kyle Buchanan:

I'm curious whether any of the characters in Swingtown will be exploring their queer sides as the series progresses.

Poul replies:

There are certainly hints that there is a certain amount of sexual fluidity within the group dynamics -- in particular, that the Deckers[played by Parrilla and Grant Show] get involved in. If you've studied open-marriage tracts of the time, it was true that within the early days of open marriage, girl-on-girl contact was tolerated to a much higher degree than boy-on-boy contact, which was strictly prohibited -- sort of like the straight male porn aesthetic, right? On our show, I would say that the relationship that develops between Trina and Susan is certainly a deep, enduring friendship, but that doesn't mean that it's a friendship that has to be devoid of physical content.

You know, I'm surprised you didn't bring up any of the younger characters.

Then Buchanan follows up, and Poul responds:

You mean the friendship between young boys B.J. (Aaron Christian Howles) and Rick (Nick Benson)?
That's the ringer. So far, we haven't explored it except in subtextual terms because we're depicting them as presexual. But it's clear in the pilot that little Rick, B.J.'s best friend, has a boy crush.

How so?
Just the way that Rick is attached to B.J. and is constantly jealous of him. Actually, there was originally a scene that we never shot that made the subtext a little bit more overt in terms of Rick's boyish attachment to B.J. We screened the pilot for test audiences, and they just jumped to the assumption: "Yeah, I liked the friendship between the two boys, one of which is gay." You can interpret it as you like. These are feelings that the people having those feelings were not even aware of.

Having been a gay kid named Rick growing up in the '70s, I instantly recognized Rick's (and, by extension, B.J.'s) predicament.

Now I would like to do a bit of compare-and-contrast. First, take a look at Swingtown's portrayal of a "Bicentennial Block Party." (Be sure to check out the parting glances between B.J. and Ricky.) Then, as an added treat, watch a video of an actual family picnic on the Fourth of July 1976. (No secrets here: it's my family, my backyard, at 1503 N. 70th Street in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.) That archival footage ends with the Bicentennial Fireworks as seen that night from Tosa's Hart Park; the CBS footage begins with a commercial.

Art:

Life:

I plan to watch the second episode of Swingtown tonight on CBS at 10:00 o'clock. I expect millions of others who enjoy guilty pleasures will be joining me. Will you?

The Link Between Food and Journalism

A couple of weeks ago, The Write Side of My Brain linked to an amusing article in the Denver Post about requirements being imposed on caterers by the organizers of this year's Democratic National Convention.

For the Denver Post, the convention is a local story, so the article, headlined "Caterers find eco-standards tough to chew," has a local flavor. The challenge for the caterers is that the convention host committee has banned certain foods and combinations of foods:

Fried shrimp on a bed of jasmine rice and a side of mango salad, all served on a styrofoam plate. Bottled water to wash it all down.

These trendy catering treats are unlikely to appear on the menu at parties sponsored by the Denver 2008 Host Committee during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

Fried foods are forbidden at the committee's 22 or so events, as is liquid served in individual plastic containers. Plates must be reusable, like china, recyclable or compostable. The food should be local, organic or both.

And caterers must provide foods in "at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white," garnishes not included, according to a Request for Proposals, or RFP, distributed last week.

The shrimp-and-mango ensemble? All it's got is white, brown and orange, so it may not have the nutritional balance that generally comes from a multihued menu.

"Blue could be a challenge," joked Ed Janos, owner of Cook's Fresh Market in Denver. "All I can think of are blueberries."

The Democrats are not alone in laying down the law on food at their convention. The Republicans, too, are working out rules, prodded, in part, by the latest iterations of congressional ethics standards.

As Chris Cillizza and Ben Pershing reported in the Washington Post over Memorial Day weekend,

...the Democratic convention in Denver and the Republican one in Minneapolis-St. Paul won't be like the old days for members of Congress, who must now live under a tightened regimen of ethics rules. Fortunately, while the House and Senate ethics committees aren't always vigilant about investigating real corruption, they have been cranking out memos (including a new one last week) on what lawmakers can and can't eat, drink and do during the conventions.

Among the do's and don't's suggested in the memo:

DO: Snag pigs in a blanket and bacon-wrapped-somethings from a tray at a party.

DON'T: Sit down to eat a meal on a plate with a fork and knife.

Hill members and their staffs are already familiar with these sometimes confusing culinary rules. As the House ethics memo points out, you may attend "receptions at which the food served is limited to hors d'oeuvres, beverages and similar food of a nominal value." Sit-down dinners are verboten. Yes, it can be hard sometimes to stand with a drink in one hand and a plate of food in the other, and consume it all without spilling on yourself, especially if a dipping sauce is involved. But you just can't sit down and eat your meal with silverware. That would corrupt the democratic process.

Here's another:

DO: Accept $49 worth of fried Twinkies at a Minnesota fair.

DON'T: Accept $51 worth (or die of a heart attack).

Lawmakers can accept any gifts worth less than $50 as long as the donor isn't a lobbyist or someone who works for a firm that employs lobbyists. Those who eat fried Twinkies, fried cheese curds and other Midwestern delicacies may not accept free emergency room care to restart their hearts, since most hospital systems employ lobbyists.

Now here comes the history lesson. Back in 1996, I traveled to Chicago to cover the Democratic National Convention, which was renominating Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who would go on to face the Republican ticket of Bob Dole and Jack Kemp. As I have noted already, presidential nominating conventions don't really do much, so there was not much "news" to report. I ended up with four feature stories. One of them was about the media at the convention, with a special focus on food. This was the second in the series, and it appeared (with photographs) in The Metro Herald on September 27, 1996:

Feeding Frenzy: The News Media at the Democratic Convention
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.
Exclusive to the Metro Herald

When University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato used the phrase "feeding frenzy" as the title of his book about the news media and contemporary American politics, he probably had little idea how literally his image might be played out. If the behavior of reporters and their colleagues at the Democratic National Convention is any indication, the media "feeding frenzy" is far more real than any professor's imaginings.

Each evening during the course of the convention's four days, the Illinois Restaurant Association sponsored and distributed free food and drinks for the media representatives. From 6:00 to 9:00, Monday through Thursday, reporters, TV crews, radio sound engineers, pundits, and gophers from legitimate news organizations were able to graze among more than a dozen booths from some of Chicago's finest -- and not-so-fine -- restaurants. Chicago's ethnic groups were much in evidence: Mexican food, Polish food, Greek, Thai, German. The Billy Goat Cafe (made famous by Saturday Night Live in the 1970s with the refrain, "Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! No Coke, Pepsi!") was there -- serving, naturally, cheeseburgers.

Reporters started to line up for the food about 5:15, wanting to be first to sample the goods before they were all snatched up and devoured. Inside the United Center, delegates and observers had to pay $5.50 and more for hot dogs and hamburgers. A small Coke (inside) was $2.50 for less than 12 ounces. At the media pavilion, however, you could get all the Snapple you could drink -- as well as Coke, Pepsi, beer, wine -- all for free. What we had was a miniature version of the annual "Taste of Chicago" festival held in Grant Park.

By the third night of the convention, delegates and others caught on to the rumors of free food in the media pavilion. Wednesday night was a horror-show of reporters elbowing delegates shoving Democratic Party officials for a cheap hamburger or for another slice of what is, without a doubt, the world's best cheesecake (from Eli's, 6510 W. Dakin Street in Chicago, which can now say that giving free food to reporters pays off in free publicity down the road -- call 800-ELI-CAKE for mail orders). So on Thursday night, the Restaurant Association and cosponsor Ameritech set up a security phalanx around the food court to assure that no one but credentialed media representatives could get through. No amount of begging, pleading, or flirting would do for the uncredentialed delegate or "special guest" -- only authentic journalists were allowed to eat. Even so, because the final night of the convention attracted more people than any other night (because of President Clinton's acceptance speech), the chaos in the media pavilion's food court resembled nothing if not one of those scenes of refugees from the Russian Revolution in Dr. Zhivago.

The Democratic Convention attracted 15,000 members of the news media to Chicago. This was 5,000 more than went to San Diego for the Republican Convention, which meant that 50 percent more reporters were chasing 150 percent fewer stories. As I noted in these pages last month, the major parties' political conventions have, over the past 25 years or so, lost their drama -- and with it the ability of a reporter to shape a story of interest to viewers or readers. "Drama" does not mean just entertainment value. It signifies three other alliterative concepts: debate, deliberation, and decision-making. At neither the Republican nor the Democratic convention were any of these three important elements of democracy in evidence.

Yet despite the absence of any real "hard" news stories -- an utter lack of debate, deliberation, or decision-making -- the media hordes arrived primed and ready in Chicago. For good reason, they sought stories outside the convention itself, such as in the official protest area just outside the United Center grounds (see the September 20 Metro Herald for more details). Perhaps most disconcerting, the media engaged in incestuous news-gathering -- interviewing and analyzing each other.

It was common to see, for instance, a reporter from a local ABC affiliate interviewing Jeff Greenfield of ABC News on the convention floor. The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt (also seen on CNN's Capital Gang) was often the target of an inquisitive reporter. All in all, reporters -- particularly broadcast-media reporters -- were as likely to interview each other as to interview elected officials or Democratic Party activists.

This incest extended to the publications available on the United Center grounds and in the dozens of convention hotels downtown. The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times made slimmed-down daily editions freely available. The morning Chicago Tribune offered a special evening edition, distributed around the media pavilions. National Journal passed out a useful and informative "Daily Convention Edition," and even the avowedly conservative Weekly Standard created a special daily edition for the convention. In addition, Roll Call and The Hill (two Washington newspapers covering Congress) shipped thousands of copies to Chicago for the convention. Dozens of other publications, ranging from Reason to the Chicago Reader, dropped off stacks of samples for the thousands of reporters, who were happy to scavenge whatever they could find.

Clearly, the media mavens wanted their colleagues to read their products -- and perhaps subscribe later. In the meantime, however, having the instant analysis of rivals available made the jobs of the reporters easier -- they did not have to make up their own jokes about Hillary Rodham Clinton, for instance, when they could just steal this line from the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "It takes a First Lady . . . "

Despite the lack of hard news to be found, the Democratic Convention was considered a plum assignment for many reporters, especially young ones who had never experienced an event like this. I met three of them who felt attending this convention was a real feather in their caps, something that increased their credibility with readers back home and gave them some substance by which to measure future political events. I was astounded at the number of reporters who were under the age of 25. (There were, indeed, older hacks in evidence, like David Broder of the Washington Post and Robert Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times. But these are commentators as much as reporters. The wet-behind-the-ears crowd was something else.)

Among the younger reporters I chanced upon were Jason Ellison, 18, of the Wisconsin Light, a weekly in Milwaukee; Sean Donahue, 18, of the Middlesex News in Framingham, Massachusetts; and Steve Klafehn, 21, of radio station WBSU-FM in Brockport, New York. I had earlier met Donahue in New Hampshire, when he was covering the Forbes campaign (see the Metro Herald, March 8 and 15, 1996); he also covered the GOP convention in San Diego.

Ellison was accompanying his publisher while Klafehn was on his own -- an enterprising reporter, he convinced his station to send him to the convention and also persuaded a local travel agency to provide him with transportation in return for sponsorship of his on-the-scene, live reports about the New York delegation.

In addition, the Children's Express team was on hand, newsgathering as they have done at every convention since 1972. Children's Express is made up of reporters as young as eight years old. Most are in the 10-14 age group. They learn their trade under the guidance of mentors. Over the years, they have been remarkably successful. In 1976, for instance, a Children's Express reporter scooped the world with the story of Jimmy Carter's choice of Walter Mondale as a running mate.

No doubt these younger reporters gained much from covering the convention. They certainly had an opportunity to learn that, in the modern age, the most important activity for convention delegates is dancing to the "Macarena" to relieve boredom. With a combination of skills and luck, however, they probably also learned how best to sniff out stories that may not be apparent on the surface -- and, with that, they may be able to rise to the levels of Al Hunt or Jeff Greenfield in the next 30 years.

But, if not, at least they got free tacos and cheesecake out of it.

I will be posting the other three of my 1996 Democratic Convention in the weeks to come, depending on whether I can find an appropriate news hook for each of them. Watch for those "history lessons" here.

Oh, for the Conventions of Yore!

"History lesson" alert.

It has become commonplace to lament the decline of the national political conventions from decision-making bodies to beauty pageants with a winner known in advance. While most would not want to return to 1920, when it took ten ballots before the Republicans nominated Warren G. Harding, or to 1924, when the Democrats struggled through 103 ballots (and 17 days) before nominating John W. Davis, there is still reason to desire that the Republicans and Democrats used the four days of their quadrennial conventions for more than receptions, buffets, hospitality suites, and message-testing for the TV cameras.

State nominating conventions -- as those who attended the recent Virginia GOP convention to select a Senate candidate can attest -- still make decisions, sometimes by a narrow margin.

The lack of drama at these conventions has led to a decline in interest among the general public, and even among political junkies. (If you are reading this blogpost, you probably fall into that latter category.) An article in Politico earlier this week noted how the TV networks are responding to this situation:

When Barack Obama made his first major appearance on the national stage in 2004, giving easily the most memorable speech of the Democratic National Convention, the traditional Big Three networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—had all returned to their regularly scheduled programming.

Gone are the days when the broadcast networks' extensive coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions was the only game in town, competing on late summer nights with a handful of television re-runs. As network viewership has declined and the political junkies have fled to cable, prime-time network coverage of the convention has dwindled.

Indeed, the Big Three each devoted just one hour in prime-time during three of four convention nights in 2004, with no live programming of that now memorable Tuesday night when Obama arrived on stage at Boston’s Fleet Center. Coincidentally, John McCain also spoke at Madison Square Garden before the networks were broadcasting live (Rudy Giuliani, though, got a coveted televised spot at the podium).

The article, by Michael Calderone, notes:

Phil Alongi, NBC’s executive producer for political coverage and special events, said that while the network has penciled in a similar programming schedule to 2004, he’s “always looking for a reason to get more air time.”

If the political parties were smart when putting together the schedule of speakers, Alongi said, “they’d come up with a hook to give us a reason to be on for longer than [during] the past few political cycles.”

It’s in part the over-scripted nature of recent conventions, where the nominees are known beforehand, that’s led to diminished interest. Where once conventions were where nominees were decided in backroom deals, now they’re where those already chosen are publicly coronated. And at this point, there’s little chance of a floor fight in Denver.

Calderone's piece brought to my mind an article I wrote a dozen years ago, reflecting on that year's Republican National Convention, which I watched (as much as I could) on television. (Later that year, I was able to attend the Democratic convention in person, covering the event [as much as I could] for The Metro Herald.)

Here is what I wrote in August 1996. It's amusing that my byline was stated as "entertainment editor" rather than, say, "political writer."

Longing for the Golden Days of Politics
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor
Exclusive to the Metro Herald

Ah, for the halcyon days of 1968! That was the year when Dan Rather was roughed up on the floor of the Democratic National Convention by "security guards" and John Chancellor ended a report from the same convention ". . . from somewhere in custody. . ." 1968 was when reporters scrambled to their typewriters at the Republican National Convention with a single question on their lips: "Spiro who?"

Watching the TV coverage of this year's Republican Convention from San Diego, one cannot help but be struck by how stage-managed and pre-programmed this quadrennial ritual has become. Democratic and Republican conventions no longer have any drama for television viewers or journalists. Nothing unpredictable happens. No wonder ABC's Ted Koppel pulled his crew out of San Diego and promises that he will not even bother to take Nightline to Chicago for the Democrats' coronation of Bill Clinton.

So thin is the news from San Diego that Scripps-Howard reported that a man dressed as a bumblebee outside the convention center attracted five reporters, all eagerly quizzing him.

Is this what American politics has come to?

Though the 1968 Democratic convention is remembered most vividly because it was marred by violence, it is only in the past few years that political conventions have become more like TV awards shows than like deliberative exercises of democracy. It is easy to imagine the announcer saying something like "And presenting the Grammy for best spin-doctoring by a duo or group is New York Congresswoman Susan Molinari! [Cheers and applause!]"

The vapidity of today's conventions -- and here I am talking about the major parties' conventions, not those of the Libertarians or the Perot party, which still hold the promise of unpredictability and the drama of spontaneity -- can be traced to the changes in the process of selecting presidential nominees that began in 1972. Since that time, the process has increasingly become front-loaded so that the nominee is determined several months before the conventions take place, with little chance of any debate or uncertainty.

Who recalls now that as recently as 1968, Ronald Reagan announced his presidential candidacy just two weeks before the Republican convention, yet he was still considered a serious challenger to front-runner Richard Nixon? Or how in that same year, George McGovern threw his hat in the ring at the last moment, in an effort to take up the banner of the slain Robert Kennedy? McGovern may have had little chance of beating Hubert Humphrey that year, but he clearly set the stage for his nomination victory four years later.

That 1972 Democratic Convention was not without its drama and controversy. I remember that, as a pajama-clad 13-year-old, I stayed up past 4:00 a.m. to watch McGovern's nomination acceptance speech, which had been interminably delayed by a rules battle on the convention floor. McGovern's message of "Come home, America" was heard by hardly anyone.

Even in 1976, the Republican convention was a cliffhanger. Incumbent President Gerald Ford eked out a nomination victory over challenger Ronald Reagan by only a handful of votes. No one knew, going into the convention, whether Ford or Reagan would emerge as the nominee. Despite Ford's winning bid, the convention clearly belonged to Reagan. Ford delivered the most powerful address of his political career in Kansas City, reminding Americans that "a government big enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take away everything you have." Yet he was forced by circumstances to invite Governor Reagan to the podium following his acceptance speech, and Reagan stole the spirit of the convention by delivering -- without notes or a teleprompter -- a gracious and energizing valedictory address. The Republican Party has never been the same; it has been Reagan's party since that night.

Remember the excitement of 1980, when Senator Ted Kennedy mounted a vigorous challenge to incumbent President Jimmy Carter? The race was close; Carter feared a loss until the weekend before the convention, when CBS News reporter Roger Mudd asked Kennedy why he wanted to be president. Kennedy, looking befuddled, was at a loss for words. The best he could muster sounded much like Bob Dole's "well, it's my turn." Kennedy's faltering response handed Carter the nomination.

That same year, the Republican convention was abuzz with rumors about Reagan's possible running mate. Walter Cronkite reported that he had it on good authority -- reputedly former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -- that Reagan would name former President Ford as his vice presidential partner. These rumors proved false, of course, but they were taken quite seriously up until the moment that Reagan, in a break with tradition, appeared on the floor of the convention shortly after the nomination vote was taken, to say that as much as he respected President Ford, his choice for vice president was runner-up George Bush. It was a powerfully dramatic moment, both for the conventioneers and the vast television audience.

This year's conventions lack all drama. Everything is plasticized. There is no digression from a minutely-planned script, with everything of importance taking place in prime time. With no surprises -- even Dole's running mate was announced before the convention began -- there is little to report. Except for Nancy Reagan's thoughtful and heartfelt address in tribute to her husband -- during which one could hear a pin drop anywhere in America -- the Republican convention had all the class of a late-night infomercial -- it lacks only an 800-number with "operators standing by to take your order!"

The front-loading of the presidential primary season deserves major scrutiny. It effectively excludes the majority of party members from participating in the selection of their parties' nominees. For instance, Virginia's delegate-selection process takes place so late in the season that Virginia has no -- zero -- impact on the nomination. Republicans and Democrats need to rethink their emphasis on Iowa and New Hampshire. If political parties are to have any substantive meaning in the new millennium, they must renew and reinvigorate their conventions as deliberative, decisionmaking events. The vitality of the parties -- of our democracy -- depends on it.

In retrospect, it's interesting to see that Virginia's February presidential primary actually did have an impact this year, at least on the Democratic side. Obama's decisive victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton is one of the major elements that suggest Virginia is "in play" this year, rather than firmly in the Republican column.

The nomination-process calendar still needs to be reformed. It's ridiculous for the Iowa caucuses to take place as early as January 3 and for the New Hampshire primary to virtually as early. It ill-serves voters, candidates, and political parties to cluster so many primary elections together and to front-load them.

Free Trade, the Trade Deficit, and Economic Growth

A couple of letters in the Washington Times over the past several days caught my eye. Both address the topic of international trade from widely different points of view.

The first letter appeared last Friday above the signature of Howard Richman, who identified himself as co-author of a book called Trading Away Our Future. (The book is published by a non-profit group called the Ideal Taxes Association, which seems to be a think-tank staffed by Mr. Richman and people sharing his surname.) His letter to the editor says, in part:

In his Tuesday Commentary column, "Economic Reality Check," Michael Barone cites many trees but misses the forest. He points out that the economy is not suffering from much unemployment (true), nor is there much inflation (true). Nor is the economy shrinking (true). He also points out that the growth rate is mighty slow, but he doesn't stop to analyze why. His conclusion: Barack Obama's "protectionism" would not help the United States economy.

What he misses is the reason U.S. growth is so slow despite the lack of unemployment. It is slow because businesses have not been investing in American production. They have not been investing because they know that if they do, the mercantilist countries that control our level of trade deficits through currency and other trade manipulations will simply drive them out of business. The key to fixing the problem is for the United States to insist on balanced trade.

Richman's letter prompted a response from Don Boudreaux, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University in Fairfax. Boudreaux's letter, which appeared in Monday's editions, deserves to be reproduced in full:

Howard Richman argues "Balanced trade is the key" (Letters, Friday/Saturday) to America's prosperity. He's confused, as evidenced by his claim that America's recent economic slowdown is linked to its trade deficit. The United States has run a trade deficit for each of the past 31 years, some of which (like the present) were periods of slow growth, but many of which were periods of high growth. Indeed, the evidence suggests that higher trade deficits are associated with higher, rather than lower, rates of economic growth.

This last point highlights another of Mr. Richman's confusions. He thinks trade deficits mean less domestic investment. Not so. Every trade deficit (more accurately, current-account deficit) is offset exactly by a capital-account surplus - meaning net inflows of capital into the domestic economy. More capital generally means more growth.

Boudreaux -- who has a knack for writing letters to the editor that he characterizes as "one-minute economics lessons -- has the better of this argument. His letter in the Times reminded me of an article I wrote on the same topic in the last century. It appears, below, as one of an irregular series of archival pieces that I think of as "history lessons."

The earliest version of this article appeared in the Chicago Tribune in August 1991. This revised version appeared in The Metro Herald in October 1993:

Free Trade and the Trade Deficit
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder's round-the-world trip to drum up business and investment for Virginia is a colorful reminder of how the globe is interconnected through commerce, finance, and industry. Virginia can only benefit when the Governor finds new markets for our agricultural and manufactured products. At the same time, the heated debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) reminds us how international trade can be a political ping-pong ball.

One aspect of the trade issue is the so-called trade deficit. According to conventional wisdom, a trade deficit is bad while a trade surplus is good. In fact, the terms "trade deficit" and "trade surplus" are so much hot air—they are empty and meaningless. To focus on the trade deficit distracts us from more important economic tasks.

National trade figures are meaningless because nations are not economic units and therefore do not trade. The numbers gathered and released by the government merely summarize countless sales and purchases made by individuals and corporations. The "nation" does not trade; only units within it do.

Canadian economist Richard Grant, writing for the Johannesburg-based Financial Mail, explains: "The implication is that exports and trade surpluses are good is totally unfounded. They are simply numerical aggregates that emerge from the summation of millions of unrelated transactions by individuals. No one is responsible for it. To say that a surplus is ‘sound' or that the balance of payments is ‘in good shape' is meaningless babble."

Grant goes on to note this example: "When a miner sells gold, he doesn't care who buys it so long as it gets sold. And he should be under no illusion that he is in any way serving the ‘national interest' by selling it to foreigners instead of local buyers. If local buyers are the highest bidders, they will—and should—get the gold."

Put another way, it doesn't really matter whether an Arlington software company sells $1 million worth of its product within Virginia or if it "exports" the software to Hyattsville, Maryland, or Accra, Ghana. What matters is that the company earned $1 million, which can then be used to employ more workers and buy more raw materials or be invested in stocks, bonds, or bank accounts.

What has happened is that persistent trade deficits have embedded themselves in the national consciousness as bad things.

"Our balance of payments is sick," cry the economists who believe the balance of payments needs medicine from the Federal Reserve Board. They argue that a balance-of-payments deficit indicates that American business—particularly manufacturing industry—is in decline. This is not necessarily true; in fact, the opposite may be the case.

At a seminar sponsored by Hillsdale College, economists Marshall Loeb and George Gilder made precisely this point. Loeb, managing editor of Fortune magazine, noted that structural change is occurring in the U.S. economy.

"After years of stagnation," he said, "U.S. manufacturing productivity is rising sharply. In 1987, it went up about 3.5 percent, more than double the rate of the middle to late 1970s and faster than Japan's or Germany's." Despite a general slowdown in the economy, this trend has continued through the early 1990s.

Far from declining as a portion of the national economy, Loeb pointed out that U.S. manufacturing currently accounts for about one-fifth of the gross national product (GNP), "almost exactly the figure that existed 10 or 15 years ago."

How this affects international trade figures was explained by Gilder, a prolific author on economic themes. He suggested that the trade deficit is beneficial to the U.S. economy, not the threat that many perceive it to be, because a substantial amount of money earned by foreign exporters is reinvested in U.S. businesses, industries, and real estate.

"The other side of a trade gap is necessarily a capital surplus," Gilder said. "That's what it means when they say the United States is becoming a net debtor. People want to lend us money. During this period when our debts were increasing, our assets were increasing much more rapidly." Between 1980 and 1988, for instance, the value of assets owned by American companies grew from 180 percent of GNP to 240 percent.

How can importing be advantageous over exporting? Gilder thinks it signifies improving competitiveness. "What happened in the early 1980s is that the United States began growing much faster than it had in the '70s, and much faster, in fact, than its trading partners were growing."

What this means to American business is that "if you're an exporter from the United States, and you're exporting to a stagnant global market, clearly you won't be able to expand your exports as fast as an exporter from a country that faces a booming American market."

Richard Grant made much the same point in the Financial Mail: "It is not exporting that makes businessmen happy, but rather selling to a wider market. How much business sells—and where—will be determined in the marketplace." And the marketplace, we know—the "invisible hand" exposed by Adam Smith—is a remarkable instrument for creating wealth.

Let's remember that the next time politicians start calling for a "national industrial policy" (that is, more central planning), or propose subsidies, quotas, and tariffs to "protect" American industries (that is, to keep obsolescent factories going despite their uselessness) or simply bash Japanese or Mexican workers to please their more bigoted constituents. The "trade deficit" is nonsense. All that matters is expanding wealth and wider opportunities for buying and selling. That's why Governor Wilder deserves our applause for traveling to Africa, Asia, and Europe to open up more markets for Virginia.

While the specific numbers for the first decade of the 21st century may be different from the last two decades of the 20th century, the principles remain the same. A trade deficit does not portend bad economic news; in fact, the opposite is often the case, since it means that Americans have money to spend on goods and services from whatever source they choose, whether here or abroad.

Go, Pat, Go!

As you might expect, I am not one who usually encourages Pat Robertson in any of his projects or activities, but I found a reason to cheer him on.

According to John McCaslin's "Inside the Beltway" column in today's Washington Times:

That unusual TV ad aired of late featuring an unlikely pairing of outspoken preachers - conservative Pat Robertson and liberal Al Sharpton - has left a bad taste in the mouths of the left, who obviously don't like mixing with the right.

Results of a new national study of 305 Democrats, Republicans and independents reveal that Democrats are less supportive of immediate government action on global warming after viewing the ad featuring Mr. Robertson and Mr. Sharpton.

The study was conducted by HCD Research and the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion to obtain Americans' views on the ad about climate change.

Unfortunately, a look at the complete results of the survey reveals that the shift among Democrats is not very significant.

Still, any shift is better than none at all. Go, Pat, go!

Mark Ellmore, Fabricator

In the old days, before the Internet and before bloggers, it was possible for political candidates to lie with impunity (even in print) and not fear being caught.

Not so anymore.

The Washington Post reports how congressional candidate Mark Ellmore, who is running for the GOP nomination in Virginia's Eighth Congressional District, fabricated quotations from that newspaper in a flier distributed to voters just days before the primary.

Theresa Vargas reports in today's Post:

A flier put out by Mark W. Ellmore's campaign days before Tuesday's U.S. House Republican primary in Northern Virginia falsely attributes material to The Washington Post, an error pointed out by his opponent and confirmed by Ellmore's staff yesterday.

Ellmore is running against Amit Singh in the primary for a chance to challenge Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a nine-term incumbent.

The flier, which hit some mailboxes Friday, attributes the following photo caption to The Post: "Amit Singh with his political mentor Libertarian Ron Paul, who reportedly has plans to disrupt the Republican Convention in Minneapolis." Those words never appeared in the newspaper or as a quote elsewhere, and the photograph was not taken by The Post.

Political bloggers across Virginia have pounced on this as evidence that Ellmore -- who might be described as a "Mike Huckabee Republican," which is not exactly complimentary -- cannot be trusted to represent the people of the Eighth District.

Doug Mataconis, for instance, says:

It seems that Mark Ellmore’s campaign has been caught red-handed spreading blatant falsehoods about his opponent in Tuesday’s primary election....

I will say this much for Ellmore, he would be qualified to replace Jim Moran in one respect, they both seem to have an interesting commitment to the truth.

Posting at the George Mason College Republican Blog, The Young Reaganite offers:

Mark Ellmore has managed not only to make himself look like a liar, he is jeopardizing the entire Republican establishment in Northern Virginia. It is imperative we elect Amit Singh to be our Republican nominee for the 8th district.

Bearing Drift has a couple of updates on the story:

Update: The Ellmore campaign responded this afternoon with a press release that doesn’t address the accusations of false statements in their material, but in turn accuses Singh of using false statements in his latest mailer.

and

Update 2: The Washington Post writes today that the quote and photo on the flier attributed to them never appeared in the paper. The Ellmore campaign told Post reporter Theresa Vargas that the information for the quote comes from the LA Times and that it was an “honest” mistake. However, a simple search of the LA Times Web site reveals that there is no article that writes about Amit Singh.

You would think that, eight years into the 21st century and some fifteen years after the Internet began to play a role in political campaigns, politicians and their operatives would have learned that you can't get away with spreading falsehoods without being found out. Ellmore deserves to lose, not just because he's wrong on the issues, and not just because he's a liar, but because he's a stupid liar who's wrong on the issues.

Faking quotations from the Washington Post just invites scrutiny. Mark Ellmore, meet Gary Hart.

Update: After he saw this blog entry, Jon Henke asked me to write a short analysis of the Ellmore-Singh race for the new web site, The Next Right (motto: "Politics. Strategy. Action.") The result can be found here.

The Evolution of Bob Barr

Southern Voice, a gay weekly published by the same company that also publishes the Washington Blade, has a long article about Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr and how (and why) his positions on gay issues have changed over the years (hat tip to Austin Cassidy's Independent Political Report).

I have noted in the past how Barr has changed his positions on the military's ban on gay servicemembers and his opposition to a federal constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Southern Voice highlights these issues in its article.

What's most interesting to me is how Barr explains that it was conversations with members of Outright Libertarians, a partisan group of gay libertarians, that helped him refine (and change) his views on issues of importance to gay and lesbian voters. Southern Voice reports:

Bob Barr sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act when he served in Congress as a Republican representing Georgia’s 7th District. Now running for president as a Libertarian, Barr advocates repealing part of the law.

In a June 2 interview with Southern Voice, Barr, who served in Congress from 1995-2003, delineated between two sections of DOMA: a full faith and credit clause that protects the rights of each state to implement its own definition of marriage, and a section that defines marriage as only between one man and one woman under federal law.

“This [second part] was intended to apply to federal programs, such as survivor benefits, Social Security [and others],” he said.

Barr said it is the second part of DOMA he would work to repeal if elected president.

“Over the years and over the last year since I’ve been more active in the Libertarian Party, I’ve talked with a number of individuals, including members of Outright Libertarians [a gay Libertarian group], and have come to view the second part as having been used as a club, or the tail wagging the dog,” Barr said. “It has become in effect a national definition of marriage. This is not what I intended.”

The article continues:

Doyle Jones, a member of Outright Libertarians living in Tucker, plans to vote for Barr for president and said he believes Barr’s reversal on DOMA is “sincere.”

“I think Outright Libertarians have influenced him,” Jones said.

Rob Power, chairperson of Outright Libertarians, said while pleased with Barr’s change of heart on DOMA, he was disappointed to hear Barr wants to repeal only part of the law.

But Power, who lives in San Francisco, does believe Barr has “evolved” on the issue. Barr first talked with Outright Libertarians at last year’s Conservative Leadership Conference in Reno, Nev. While Power was not at the conference, he worked with fellow Libertarians on devising a strategy to convince Barr he was wrong on DOMA by stressing to him the law was an attack on federalism, or state’s rights.

After a conversation with current Outright Libertarian secretary Brian Miller at that conference, Barr essentially reversed his position on DOMA, Power said.

While Barr does not yet think gay marriage is a good idea, he is open to both civil unions and permitting gay couples to adopt children:

Barr also told Southern Voice this week he now believes in civil unions and that gay couples deserve legal benefits and rights.

He supports gay people adopting, saying he has seen “plenty of heterosexual people adopt that shouldn’t have.”

Barr shares the position of many libertarians -- including me -- of opposing federal employment non-discrimination laws and hate-crimes laws:

And in line with the Libertarian Party, Barr, a former federal prosecutor, opposes hate crimes legislation, saying such a law “actually makes cases harder to prosecute.”

He also does not support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban job bias based on sexual orientation, again citing the need for less governmental interference.

Barr's biggest break with conservatives may come in his opposition to DADT:

But Barr advocates dumping the federal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy prohibiting gay service members from serving openly. He said this week the firing of gay Arabic linguists, for example, is a threat to national security.

In a June 2007 op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal titled “Don’t Ask, Who Cares,” Barr wrote, “As a conservative Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2003, I was hardly a card-carrying member of the gay-rights lobby. I opposed then, and continue to oppose, same-sex marriage, or the designation of gays as a constitutionally protected minority class,” Barr wrote.

“Service in the armed forces is another matter. The bottom line here is that, with nearly a decade and a half of the hybrid ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ policy to guide us, I have become deeply impressed with the growing weight of credible military opinion which concludes that allowing gays to serve openly in the military does not pose insurmountable problems for the good order and discipline of the services,” he added.

While Bob Barr still has a bit more room to evolve and improve -- it would be nice for him to say that it's a good idea for gay couples to have not just the responsibilities of marriage but also all of the rights and privileges associated with it -- he deserves credit for listening to his erstwhile opponents and coming around to their point of view.

Bob Barr's "conversion" is an example of why libertarians have to be out in the arena, making arguments, trying to change minds. He is also an example of how nobody is a lost cause and why it is important to engage in dialogue even with people with whom we vehemently disagree.

A Tale of Two State Capitols

Last July, while vacationing in Wisconsin, I took a self-guided tour of the state capitol building in Madison with some friends. Thanks to state Senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend), we were able to climb to the top of the rotunda dome, and even into the lantern that caps the building.

Last weekend, while attending the Republican Party of Virginia's state convention, I was part of a group invited to tour the state capitol building in Richmond by Delegate Rob Bell. Delegate Bell -- who represents constituents in Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, and Orange counties -- arranged for Bruce F. Jamerson, Clerk of the House of Delegates and Keeper of the Rolls of the Commonwealth, to guide the tour.

What follows is video of both tours.

First, the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, which is said to be the tallest of all the state capitol buildings. This video is primarily of the interior of the building.

This next video may be recognizable as part of the previously published "Getting High" series.

I have more material on the Virginia State Capitol, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson and is the second-oldest state capitol building in the country. (The Maryland State Capitol in Annapolis was built earlier than the one in Richmond.)

The tour was a real history lesson. Who knew, for instance, that Mr. Jefferson's capitol was almost torn down in the post-Civil War era, but that lack of funds prevented the demolition?

Mr. Jamerson's narration is well worth the time of watching this nine-part video series. (The whole thing lasts for about an hour.)

Part I:



Part II:



Part III:



Part IV:



Part V:



Part VI:



Part VII:



Part VIII:



Part IX:

Note, in Part VII, that Keith Drake tells about his experience as a Virginia Elector, casting his vote for George W. Bush in 2004 in a ceremony in the Old Senate Chamber. (The Virginia members of the Electoral College will meet in that same place on December 15 to cast their ballots.)

Delegate Bell also takes some time, in Parts VIII and IX, to give us some "inside baseball" about how the House of Delegates works -- where members sit, how they determine when to take a break in the lounge, when to stop eating because the cameras are aimed at them, and so forth.

The Jeffersoniad's Memo to Jeff Frederick

Last weekend, Delegate Jeff Frederick of Prince William County was elected the new chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, succeeding John Hager. Members of the Jeffersoniad blogging collective decided to share a few ideas with him as he takes office and begins to shape the party apparatus for the next four years.

Jeffersoniad members sent this memo to Chairman Frederick, who at the moment is taking a well-earned vacation with his family:

To: Chairman Jeff Frederick, Republican Party of Virginia

From: The Jeffersoniad

Date: June 5, 2008

RE: Technology and the RPV

Congratulations on your election to lead the Republican Party of Virginia. We are excited to have an energized leadership team heading up the party in Richmond. We want to help you and your team succeed in your quest to revitalize the Republican Party of Virginia.

As you know, the Jeffersoniad is a coalition of conservative bloggers who write about the issues facing our Commonwealth. Because many of our members have significant political experience and knowledge in Virginia and beyond, we are confident we can be an asset to your team and your plan to improve the Party. Our first offering is this memorandum outlining our ideas on how you can utilize various technologies to expand and improve the communications of the party.

Party activists like to be in the know; they want to be informed about what is going on. For far too long, and for far too many, RPV has been an obscure building in a bad neighborhood in Richmond to which only the most elite of Party insiders had access. You have the opportunity to transform RPV into an integral part of GOP efforts in Virginia accessible to all. Use of technology to disseminate information should be the first item on your list of things to do.

First, we are very pleased with your campaign promise to revamp the RPV website to include elements that will be welcoming to new visitors, and will also give an “inside baseball” feel to all. We look forward to the changes you have planned. If desired by your team, we are available to provide feedback and a medium for outreach so that the revamped site is a success. From providing beta testing of the new site to participating in an explosive launch of the new site, we are here to help you make it work.

Furthermore, on websites, your initiative to ensure every Republican unit has a website is a solid proposal. Many units may not have the resources to produce and host their own site, and as you have stated, RPV should be there for those units. RPV should produce boiler plate sites that can be hosted on RPV servers that, at the very least, contain local party contact and meeting information as well as contact information for local elected Republicans and Republican candidates.

A second element of technology use we would like to see significant work on is email contact lists. Unfortunately, such lists are valuable resources that are often held tight by the owners of those lists. It is imperative for RPV to build and maintain a solid Republican activist list that can be easily sorted by city/county, HOD legislative district, State Senate legislative district, and Congressional District. These lists not only need to be constantly updated, but also should have an easy method by which visitors to the RPV and local committee websites can sign up in the first place. The RPV has Voter Vault. Does someone have the technology to quickly update this database with emails? Or do you want to manage a separate list – if so, then there should be a means to do cross checking and integration.

Social networking sites are all the rage right now. We have seen significant use of sites like Facebook and My Space in the political arena. Many Congressional candidates make effective use of these sites to recruit young volunteers, announce events, and communicate their message. RPV should be in the game as well. RPV needs to create a presence in all popular social networking sites and use these sites to disseminate information about the Party.

We would be remiss if we neglected to mention the role of blogs and the blogging community to advance the Party. Blogs play a very important role in Virginia politics today. RPV should acknowledge the blogs and work with coalitions like the Jeffersoniad to disseminate information important to RPV. Many members of the Jeffersoniad are former candidates, future candidates, former Party officials, current Party officials, and -- of course -- future Party officials. We have vested interests in seeing RPV succeed and grow. You can expect us to be very favorable to actions you take that will improve the Party. At the same time, you can expect us to be very honest if you do not live up to the promises of your campaign.

RPV must embrace blogs, not only as readers and passers of information, but also as active participants. RPV has attempted to incorporate a blog on its website with limited success. RPV should have a blog that can be used to get information out. You should also use the RPV blog to expose the opposition. Obviously, we understand the need for caution when posting on an official Party blog, but those assigned to post to the Party blog should be trusted and have the freedom to post with very limited bureaucratic process to go through for post approval.

Also, we should come to a mutual understanding of free speech. There will be times when the RPV doesn’t want to be branded with the opposition’s labels for everything a blog/blogger has ever said. Likewise, there may be an action or statement from the RPV that blogs/bloggers might want to keep some distance. It’s worth a collective chat to talk about such times before they happen so expectations and responses are held in common understandings.

The use of video, audio and graphics can’t be understated. If RPV opens the door, then we could suggest cogent clips or symbolic statements that RPV can consider to spend the resources, or not, to make them happen. Likewise, the material prepared by users might be considered by RPV for use. As always, good humor and taste are personal and won’t be universally enjoyed.

Blogs should also be used at the local level. Ideally it would great for RPV to develop a blog coalition that is made up of those who make posts to their local unit blogs. There should be mechanism in place that enables RPV posts to be easily pushed down to local unit blogs.

We are very pleased with your campaign promise to create the Majority Blog to get information out to members of the General Assembly. We would encourage more use of these specialty blogs for the purpose of getting information into the right hands.

There are many more tools becoming available every day, we hope RPV takes advantage of all available tools to get information out on the street.

Finally, we would recommend creating the position of Director of New Media within the RPV staff structure. It should be the duty of this position to utilize all of the available technology to get the message of the Republican Party of Virginia out to all.

We hope you take this memo into consideration as you move RPV forward into the 21st Century. We want to see RPV grow and have unprecedented success in the coming years. We wish you luck in your leadership role of the Republican Party of Virginia.

The Jeffersoniad is:

badrose
Bearing Drift
Below The Beltway
CatHouse Chat
Conservativa
Crystal Clear Conservative
Deo Vindice
J's Notes
Leslie Carbone
On The Spot
Rappahannock Red
Rick Sincere News & Thoughts
Right-Wing Liberal
Scott's Morning Brew
Shaun Kenney
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Skeptical Observer
Virginia Virtucon
Write Side of My Brain

Final RPV Convention Post

There's little to add to the news emanating from the Republican Party of Virginia's state convention last weekend, since so many bloggers have done such a fine job of reporting, analyzing, and parsing what happened.

Scott's Morning Brew has an absolutely amazing round-up of dozens of posts from various Virginia bloggers. His list is as comprehensive as one could expect. If you want to find out what happened in Richmond on May 30-31, this is the place to start.

New York Gov't Encourages Growth of Organized Crime

The big news from New York today is that a new cigarette tax has become mandatory. As Paul Merrill reports for Albany TV station WXXA:

A statewide tax increase of $1.25 per pack of packaged cigarettes went into effect on Tuesday, bringing the total tax on a pack of cigarettes in New York State to $2.75.

The increase is estimated to bring the state's total tax revenue from cigarettes to approximately $1.3 billion.

That total is not increasing directly proportionally to the tax increase per pack because the state realizes many smokers will find other ways of getting their cigarettes or simply kick the habit altogether.

A pack of cigarettes in the Capital Region now costs about $6.

Additional taxes in New York City put the cost of a pack of cigarettes there closer to the $10 mark.

Some argue that this latest tax increase will push smokers to Native American stores, the Internet, or bootleggers who transport cigarettes across state lines.

We'll get back to that last point momentarily. But Jon Dougherty of WTVH-TV in Syracuse notes another effect (the grammatical error in the first sentence is his, not mine):

The average price of a pack of cigarettes is pushing $7.00, and independent smoke shop owners are seeing less customers because of it. Smokers buying cigarettes will have to pay up to $2.00 more per pack. At Tobacconist in Armory Square, a pack that cost $5.00 yesterday, will cost you over $6.50 today. The owner says that's going to hurt business.

A few blocks away, smokers were hesitant to buy cigarettes at the Downtown Smoke Shop in Syracuse today. The higher price left business slower than normal.

Smoke shop owners are afraid of losing customers to Indian Reservations, where there are no taxes on cigarettes. We spoke to the Onondaga Nation Smoke Shop. They say they've received more phone calls from customers wanting to know their price for cigarettes. The store sells pack $2.00 to $3.00 cheaper than in the city. For small smoke shops, that's hard to compete with.

While smoke shop owners off the reservation might be sad and smoke shop owners on the reservation might be glad, those laughing most heartily today are mobsters and terrorists who rely on cigarette smuggling for large portions of their tax-free, cash income.

It's not like this effect is unknown. I wrote about it more than a decade ago for The Metro Herald, which published the following article on April 17, 1998:

Higher Cigarette Taxes Set Stage for New Crime Wave
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

(Arlington, Va.) --- The proposed federal settlement with the tobacco companies -- now in limbo as the tobacco companies have, at least for the moment, backed out -- includes a provision that federal excise taxes on cigarettes will rise from $1.10 (the congressional proposal) to $1.50 (the president's preference) a pack over the next several years. Experience in many states and foreign countries teaches us that such a tax increase will lead to more cigarette smuggling by organized criminals, with the likelihood of gang violence as various crime syndicates battle for "turf" in the contraband cigarette market.

In congressional testimony last December, Robert A. Robinson of the General Accounting Office (GAO) reported that "smuggling cigarettes from low- to high- tax states, or interstate smuggling, prominent in the 1970s, may now be a reemerging problem . . . In fact, recent estimates suggest that smuggling is responsible for states collectively losing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual tax revenues." The problem is also international in scope, as Robinson explained:

"International smuggling has occurred recently between Canada and the United States. According to the Canadian government, sharp increases in Canadian federal and provincial cigarette taxes in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to large-scale smuggling between the United States and Canada conducted almost entirely by organized crime. Violence increased, merchants suffered, and in one year alone, Canada and its provinces lost over $2 billion (in Canadian dollars) in tax revenues. Canada responded in 1994 by sharply reducing federal and provincial cigarette taxes . . . Since then, smuggling has declined considerably."

Writing in Reason magazine in 1995, Ed Carson explained how Canada's rising tobacco taxes set into motion the law of unintended consequences. "The result was an invitation to organized crime. Mohawk Indians from tribes along the U.S.-Canada border, biker gangs, and Asian Triads smuggled cigarettes across the border in boats, airplanes, trucks, legitimate courier companies, and snowmobiles. By the end of 1993, nearly one in three cigarettes was contraband."

In February of this year, Erin Schiller of the Pacific Research Institute noted the perverse, unexpected effects of Canada's cigarette tax. Despite the steep tax hike, Schiller wrote in the Washington Times, "youth smoking did not decrease and many officials ironically argued that high taxes made it more difficult to control youth smoking."

How could this be? Notes the GAO, "According to the Canadian Prime Minister, as the portion of the Canadian market supplied by smuggled tobacco increased, the average price paid for cigarettes dropped. Access to cheap contraband tobacco undermined the government's health policy objectives of reducing tobacco consumption, particularly among youth."

In perhaps the most delicious irony, U.S. college students living near the Canadian border made a practice of going on "drinking holidays" to Canada, where the drinking age is lower. To pay for their vacations, they would take carloads of low-priced U.S. cigarettes to sell or trade for liquor.

Canada is not alone. Washington Times correspondent Erik Kirschbaum reported in early 1996 that a similar smuggling problem was occurring in Germany. Cigarette smuggling led to "a surge in gangland-style executions and turf wars [that] made Berlin streets more dangerous than at any time since World War II," he wrote. "Authorities fear that cigarette trafficking is leading to crime empires dealing in extortion, prostitution, stolen cars, drugs, and weapons." Kirschbaum quoted a Berlin police detective as saying that "people are being executed in cold blood in their apartments and in broad daylight on the streets, on subway platforms, in front of hundreds of witnesses."

Weeks later, Paul Geitner reported in USA Today that "turf battles between the Vietnamese gangs that control street-level sales have been blamed for the deaths of 40 Vietnamese, 15 in Berlin alone [in 1996]." These killings, he said, are "the latest episode in a bloody gang war over Berlin's lucrative trade in smuggled cigarettes." The reason? Just one truck loaded with 50,000 cartons can net a smuggler $550,000 in profits.

According to former Treasury Department official Bruce Bartlett, all across Europe, high taxes are resulting in a bonanza for smugglers. "One-fourth of the world's cigarettes are now smuggled across national borders to evade taxes and tariffs," he wrote last August. "Governments are already losing $16 billion per year in tax revenues -- a figure likely to rise as organized crime becomes a larger player in the business of smuggling smokes. In Italy alone, organized crime is said to make $500 million per year smuggling cigarettes."

As long as tobacco remains a legal commodity, efforts to control its consumption through regulation or taxation are doomed to fail. This was the case during the blundering "noble experiment" of alcohol prohibition, when possession of alcohol was legal but the sale and importation of it were not. This created an instant black market for criminal kingpins like Al Capone and Joseph P. Kennedy, giving birth to organized crime in this country. With excessive cigarette tax rates, the Mob will have just one more outlet for criminal entrepreneurship.

It's obviously time to rethink the tobacco settlement -- particularly the misguided idea of raising cigarette taxes.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Richard Sincere, a nonsmoker, chairs the Virginia chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus (www.rlc.org).

If you think the link between cigarette smuggling and terrorism -- a more salient issue today than in 1998 -- is nebulous, consider what Jim Waters of the Bluegrass Institute, a think tank based in Kentucky, wrote in the Times-Tribune on May 9:

The notion that cigarette smuggling, driven by higher taxes, created a big-enough business to fund terrorists seemed goofy.

But the truth here is at least as strange as the fiction. A report released April 29 by New York Rep. Peter King shows how terrorists benefit from high cigarette taxes.

“In total, law enforcement officials in New York state estimate that well-organized cigarette smuggling networks generate between $200,000 (and) $300,000 per week,” the report stated. “A large percentage of the money is believed to be sent back to the Middle East, where it directly or indirectly finances groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda.”

Two primary strategies used by these smugglers of terror involve either smuggling cigarettes from other states with much-lower taxes. Or they make peace with Indian reservations, where cigarettes aren’t taxed.

James Damask wrote for the Mackinac Center that “fully one-fourth of all cigarettes sold worldwide are now smuggled from low-tax areas to high-tax areas to reap the criminal’s reward for government intervention in matters best left to the private sector.”

These activities are not limited to North America, with funds going to the Middle East, either. Consider this story from Sunday's Moscow Times (that's Moscow, Russia, not Idaho):

Bulgaria, an EU newcomer under pressure from the bloc to clean up its act, said Friday that it had broken up on a criminal network suspected of financing rebel groups in Chechnya.

The gang of mainly Chechens was involved in racketeering, blackmail, arms deals, money laundering and cigarette smuggling, the national security agency said in a statement. "The group is suspected of financing terrorist formations in Chechnya," it said.

Cigarette smuggling has been a staple of organized crime activity in the Balkans for years, perhaps predating the fall of the Soviet Union and the break up of Yugoslavia. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project titled one of its recent reports "Cigarette Smugglers Trade in Murder" and began it by saying:

In the Balkans, death and cigarettes are closely related.But it's not always the carcinogens that are the problem.

The illegal tobacco trade takes its share of lives.

High-profile killings connected to illicit tobacco networks in the Balkans have claimed journalists, intelligence officers, politicians and the criminals themselves. In the fight to control this multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise, gangsters often use the most ruthless methods to assert their authority and send a reminder of their power to the public at large.

In one of the more chilling examples of cigarette smugglers' disregard for life, Dusko Jovanović was shot and killed outside the paper he worked at in Montenegro, a regional cigarette smuggling hub. The then editor-in-chief of Dan, the Montenegrin daily, was gunned down in 2004 shortly after publishing a series of articles on the illicit tobacco smuggling activities of underworld kingpins.

The killing was among the most vicious in a particularly bloody period in the recent history of Montenegrin cigarette smuggling. It followed the slaying on May 30th, 2000, of Goran Zurgić, a security advisor to then Montenegrin president Milo Đukanović. Zurgić, at the time cooperating with western intelligence agencies investigating Đukanović’s business dealings, was believed to be murdered by Darko Raspopović, then head of Montenegro’s anti-terrorism unit at its Interior Ministry. Raspopović himself was shot and killed in Podgorica the following January.

Those are just a few examples of how cigarette smuggling -- which is done almost entirely to avoid tariffs and taxes, since tobacco is a legal product in most countries -- benefits the mob.

Raising taxes on cigarettes may serve some short-term goals, such as increasing revenues for governments to misspend, but in the long run, it causes more harm than good.

RPV Convention Video: Highlights

For those of you who don't want to slog through hours of video coverage of the 2008 Republican Party of Virginia, here is a summation of what happened. I call it a "two-minute highlight reel."

You'll see soundbites from Bob Marshall, Jim Gilmore, Bill Bolling, Bob McDonnell, George Allen, John Hager, Eric Cantor, and more.

Enjoy:

Virginia GOP Gets a Senate Candidate

At the Republican Party of Virginia's state convention on Saturday, delegates voted to nominate former Governor Jim Gilmore as the GOP's candidate for the U.S. Senate this year. Having defeated Bob Marshall for the nomination, Gilmore goes on to face the all-but-certain Democratic nominee, former Governor Mark Warner (whose nomination will be confirmed at a party convention on June 14), as well as Libertarian candidate William Redpath and, possibly, Independent Green candidate Gail "For Rail" Parker.

In this series of videos, you will see Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, who chaired the convention, announce the results of the vote for the nomination, followed -- with an amusing delay -- by Bob Marshall's tepid concession speech (with no sign of support or endorsement of Gilmore), and then a video biography of the Senate candidate. Everything is wrapped up with a victory speech by Jim Gilmore himself.

First, Marshall concedes:

(Note how Marshall [at time marker 3:29 on the video] brazenly states he believes in "respect for the rights of all persons, old and young." Given his prominent sponsorship of the Marshall-Newman Amendment and his proud claim of being Virginia's "chief homophobe," we know he does not really believe in the rights of "all persons.")

Second, the Gilmore family takes the stage, the video plays, and the speech begins:

Third, Gilmore continues his remarks:

And fourth, Gilmore concludes his victory speech:

RPV Convention Video: Keynote Speech by George Allen

Former U.S. Senator and former Virginia Governor George F. Allen (who also served in Congress and held Thomas Jefferson's seat in the Virginia House of Delegates) was the keynote speaker at the 2008 Republican Party of Virginia state convention.

This video has most of his speech. The first part is truncated because Allen spoke earlier than the convention's printed program indicated, and I was caught by surprise. I didn't miss much, though; here are the opening paragraphs that do not appear on the video (idiosyncratic grammar, punctuation, and capitalization as in original):

Ladies and Gentlemen, diverse stripes of Republicans, Patriotic freedom fighters all -- are you all ready to win? Well, then, [ladies and gentlemen] -- Start your Creative Engines! This is a crucial election year where our fellow Virginians and the people of the United States will choose the direction of our country in consequential times. This is a time we need a person with experience, judgment and a proven record of leadership. We need John McCain as our next President of the United States.

Soon we will find out who our Chairman and U.S. Senate nominee will be. Whoever prevails will need all our support in welcoming to people to join our Republican team.

My friends, the reality is that voters care about more than just Republican vs. Democrat. They care about ideas, solutions, and guiding principles. To motivate people for our cause, we need to let them know what we stand for!

We get our philosophical inspiration from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan once said "Republicans believe every day is the 4th of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15." Voters do need to compare competing visions.

That is where the video begins. Note that the above prepared remarks were meant to be delivered before we knew that Jim Gilmore was the nominee for the U.S. Senate race. (I also must apologize for some of the garbled audio moments. I don't know what caused them.)

Part I:



Part II:

RPV Convention Video: Speeches by Jeff Frederick

Delegate Jeff Frederick of Prince William County became the new chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia at the state GOP convention on May 31. No vote results were announced, but the buzz behind the scenes was that Frederick took 60 percent of the total. (Hager conceded and moved that Frederick be elected by acclamation.)

In this first video, Amy Frederick, the candidate's wife, puts his name in nomination and introduces him to the crowd of Republican activists. He then asks for their votes.

Following the vote, the new chairman gave brief remarks thanking his wife, his campaign staff, and others.

More video from the RPV convention will be posted soon, as fast as it can be edited and processed.