April Week 4, 2005

Monday April 18 , 2005

A super-secret cabal of six people control the world's money markets and the weather. (http://www.paranoidschizophrenic.com)

Yes, there really is such a site... a case of "If you can imagine it, it probably exists somewhere in the world."

Have you heard of the "Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration". If the Taliban was a Christian organization it would definitely be one of the founding members of this outfit. I am a Christian by some definitions, I have a Christian outlook on life and I believe in the Mystery of God... but I'll be damned if I want to live in a Christian Nation governed by some Calvinist interpretation of the laws of God set down in the Bible. The Bible is a big book full of self-serving diatribes used by ancients to justify slavery, intolerance, rape, murder, and the destruction and domination of entire countries. There are good things in the Bible but there are also horrible things, things to justify the Crusades, torture, infanticide, horrible inhumane punishments. If you don't think it can happen here remember that the KKK, the American Nazi Party and every single Anti Government Militia and Rightwing Loony hate monger claims to base their creed and justification for their intolerance on the teachings of the Bible. Beware of the passionate Christian... he wants your mind your soul and your money to serve his vision of the perfect world where he determines your fate.

I am posting a well written article on China's "Spontaneous" riots denouncing Japan for "Re-writing history"... it is scary to think what China has suppressed in it's textbooks, America is pretty damn good at rewriting history too... War of 1812, Indian [genocide] wars, Philippine atrocities, we still don't have the whole truth behind the invasion of Panama, CIA assistance to the Taliban in the 80's and 90's, Nicaragua Contra's, support for Chilean dictators, meddling in Venezuela and Argentina, hiding Nazi war criminals... History is written by the victors and is rewritten by the people in control politically.

Am I a hopeless cynic or a resigned realist, I wish I knew...

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.

Edvard TELLER American physicist, b. Hungary (1908-)

An excerpt from an article in the Washington Post:

Monday, April 18, 2005; Page A16

"THE PRESUMPTION ought to be that citizens ought to know as much as possible about decision making," President Bush told the convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week when asked about his administration's tight controls on information. "I know there is a feeling that we are too security-conscious. I think we are becoming balanced."

The assumption underlying this remark is that secrecy and security go hand in hand and that openness in government carries risks. This is certainly often true; yet what's less recognized is that secrecy can be harmful, not only to democratic values but to national security as well, because it can impede the flow of information to those who need it. Recently the National Academy of Sciences, as part of a report on the security of spent fuel at nuclear plants, provided an example, noting that "security restrictions on sharing of information and analyses are hindering progress in addressing potential vulnerabilities."

Again I am reminded of: "During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information." Joseph GOEBBELS German National Socialist Propaganda Minister (1897-1945)

Tuesday April 19 , 2005

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.

Aldous Huxley ~

Pope Benedict XVI... The Enforcer... Oh my...

I was told that the old Pope sold poison gas to the Nazi's... I checked it out, he didn't... At the beginning of the war he was a theology student and held several jobs, one that he held for a couple years was at a the Solvay Chemical Plant... they made Soda Ash, used to allow dyes to bond with cellulose and makes the color permanent... it had nothing to do with poison gas... I think I found out where the rumor came from... the original accusation apparently came from the tract, The Fugitive Pope, published in 1990, By Tony Alamo Ministries, This guy is a real loony-toon, he's convinced that anyone who doesn't believe in his ministry is in league with Satan... it was expanded on by -William Cooper, BEHOLD A PALE HORSE, (Light Technology Publishing, 1991), I think people have spread this ridiculous fable because they want to believe it, they want to believe that the Roman Catholic Church is evil and that the Pope is the personification of it in order to somehow make their beliefs more pious... or something. Why spread lies? It is all over the internet and it seems that every Whacko Fundamentalist Christian website has some reference to it, look at European Institute of Protestant Studies, Remnant of God... on and on... it's really pathetic.

Luis Posada, self admitted Cuban terrorist is applying for asylum here... Mr. Posada is a CIA trained graduate of the Bay of Pigs debacle. He was convicted of setting off a bomb on a market place in Panama, arrested for a plot to kill Castro at a Central American Summit meeting and is suspected of being the mastermind behind the bringing down of a Cuban airliner and the death of 77 passengers and crew... interesting dilemma for Boy George...

Christy is teaching tonight till 2000, she is going to an SDA retreat tomorrow and won't be back till Sunday...

Wednesday April 20 , 2005

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.
Henry David Thoreau, 1848

This is a tough one for me, I think I know what Henry's getting at but I'm not sure the government is populated primarily by bureaucrats the managers are supposed to be elected by an educated public and serve as their representatives... it seems to me as though the people we have elected have begun to operate as though we have voted them into an aristocracy and they now have carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want to do and the only way to rein them in is to tear into them like they are tearing into Tom Delay. You can't tell me that his peers weren't aware of his abuses, they probably are just as cavalier about their responsibilities to their constituent as Good ole Tommy-boy.

To me micro-managed (at taxpayer expense) 'Town Hall Meetings', Gerrymandering, spin-doctoring, armored limousine motorcades, million dollar parties, unlimited expense accounts, kickbacks, private jets, and being treated like royalty are excesses. Where is the "Free Press"? How can we allow speaking the truth to be punished and we can't legally shut people up for premeditated malicious slander. I am so sick of seeing and hearing half truths and outright lies (on both sides) spread around the media and the internet that it's making me feel frustrated and stressed. When I look up a subject on Google News and get sent to Rush Limbaugh's website something is terribly wrong. When Ann Coulter and Michael Moore are poster children for the extremes on the cover of Time Magazine... and I haven't forgotten that they named George Walker Bush Man of the Year after he manipulated the country into a preemptive unnecessary war against a country that was NOT a threat. I think I have awakened into aome sort of Orwellian parallel universe.

Looks like Payback is going to be a bitch for Mr. Bolton... all the little people he has tried to destroy over the years are coming out from licking their wounds and are trying to 'out' the SOB for what he apparently is... a self serving bully and a bootlicking poser.

It's Confirmed: Bolton is a Nutter!
C. L. Cook
PEJ News
April 18, 2005

It seems everywhere John Bolton goes he leaves a trail of bullied and embittered subordinates. Any who contradict his often fantastical conclusions, or merely question his confabulations, are immediately berated, belittled, and find themselves the objects of smear campaigns designed to ruin their careers.

Consider the case of Melody Townsel. Ms. Townsel still feels the sting more than a decade later. So much so, she presented a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee weighing the nomination. She claims, while working with US AID in Kyrgyzstan she ran afoul of Bolton. She'd written a letter to complain about the many problems with the contractor carrying out the aid contract. At the time, Bolton represented as legal counsel one of the contractors named. Townsel goes on to describe what happpened next.

"Within hours of sending a letter to US AID officials outlining my concerns, I met John Bolton, whom the prime contractor hired as legal counsel to represent them to US AID. And, so, within hours of dispatching that letter, my hell began. Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel - throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats."

"When US AID asked me to return to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in advance of assuming leadership of a project in Kazakstan, I returned to my project to find that John Bolton had proceeded me by two days. Why? To meet with every other AID team leader as well as US foreign-service officials in Bishkek, claiming that I was under investigation for misuse of funds and likely was facing jail time. As US AID can confirm, nothing was further from the truth."

"As a maligned whistleblower, I've learned firsthand the lengths Mr. Bolton will go to accomplish any goal he sets for himself. Truth flew out the window. Decency flew out the window. In his bid to smear me and promote the interests of his client, he went straight for the low road and stayed there. John Bolton put me through hell - and he did everything he could to intimidate, malign and threaten not just me, but anybody unwilling to go along with his version of events. His behavior back in 1994 wasn't just unforgivable, it was pathological."

Serious charges, but coming from a self-described "whistleblower" easily brushed aside. But there's more. As an officer of the U.S. government, Bolton has consistently lied and schemed to further his own ambitions, sacrificing his sworn duties to his superiors. Unnamed insiders say Bolton, during his term as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security actively blocked intelligence reports from reaching his boss, Colin Powell, and Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice.

This selective use of information concerning matters of State urgency are more than reckless, more than simply a case of individual ambition; these are treasonous offences that kept vital information regarding U.S. strategies for dealing with Iran and their alleged nuclear program; issues that could see another war in the middle-east.

The anonymous officials go on to cite a dozen examples of Bolton's "back channeling" information while serving as the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. And worse, Bolton not only held on to information that didn't jibe with his world view, he also created "intelligence" that furthered those views. Remember Cuba's chemical weapons program? That hoary bit of nonesense came straight from the horse's mouth.

And now, the man who so famously said the U.N. building could lose ten stories and it wouldn't matter is poised to be the United States' top man? Only if he can outrun the hordes he's stepped on during his illustrious rise to power in George Bush's America!

Christy is gone to Camp Cedar Falls . She is taking her mother up and meeting her sister up there tomorrow... it's a beautiful place... they don't have anything there that interest's me, but it is pretty. It's a nice retreat for Christy and it seems to keep her rejuvenated... that's a plus I guess.

Thursday April 21 , 2005

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen, author, actor, and filmmaker (1935- )

Not an excessively productive day... the house is fairly clean, couple loads of laundry, saw the last 3 innings of the girl's baseball game.

Friend John is home from the hospital minus one kidney and sporting a glorious wound.

I put an excellent article on the Articles page... "The Theocrats" by William Rivers Pitt... Once again my thoughts are spelled out better by someone else. I wish I had the expertise and fortitude to bang out articles like his...

Friday April 22 , 2005

Never underestimate your ability to overestimate your ability.

Donna Lewis

A possible reason why G.W. nominated such a reportedly obnoxious boor as John Bolton just dawned on me. Rove is trying to distract everyone from another appointment... but which one?

I was busy spinning around in circles and got nothing done...

Saturday April 23 , 2005

Hey Mr Limbaugh ... Earth, love it or leave it!

Bumper Sticker

I'm trying to keep the house clean and get the laundry caught up... Baldo is helping... Christian will do nothing Monica will do what I tell her if I am very specific and Cindy does what she's told herself she will do... I guess. It's 1730 and the rain that was promised hasn't arrived yet, Calie has a full day planned ending with a basketball game against Conejo at 2200, Monica needs to be there to play too... Rhonda took them... a good thing, these guys would have been a handful tonight... I am going to bed ASAP.

Christy should be back about four or five in the afternoon tomorrow, if she doesn't have to take her mother to the Dr. apparently she is wheezing enough to make Christy concerned...

Sunday April 24 , 2005

I had a pretty good rant here but the damn program crashed... there is no "recover" or "Autosave" option with this program... it doesn't crash very often but when it does it seems to be at the very worst possible time... damn...damn damn damn.

I read an article about an event being staged today called "Justice Sunday" I was completely taken by surprise. I know I'm not in the Christian Fundamentalist loop but the fact that something this big snuck in under my radar is a little scary. I can't remember what I wrote...

What's it going to take to take the country back from these people. They want to control the World. They are using tried and proven tactics developed by the the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. If they can find a way to control the Judicial Branch as well as the Administrative and Congress they will control the Country.

I for one don't want to live in a Christian Country I want to live in a Democratic Country... we can't allow one religion or one ideology rule to run the country. I don't believe that George Bush is capable of masterminding this movement, I do believe he supports it though. I think Cark Rove, Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen ,Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel and Paul Wolfowitz are smart enough. We are no longer being governed by Statesmen we are being governed by ex CEO's. We aren't are hardly even a Country any more, we are a Company focused on the Bottom Line.

The people that ran the show in Kentucky tonight want to be in the drivers seat, they want to tell us how to think and how to worship and who we can marry. These are powerful men Bill Frist, Tony Perkins and James Dobson... they are intellectual bullies and the worst kind of autocratic thugs. They know what's right for you and they control millions of people who have fallen for their vision for the new Christian Utopia.

Their personal Eden is a place where their loyal followers toil happily away to make them richer and more powerful... it has worked time and again through the ages and there is no reason to think these assholes won't pull it off this time.

The biggest problem is that though they are the minority they are very well organized and highly motivated with religious zeal the opposition is fragmented and also selfishly motivated each group having a lot of passion for promoting their own narrow or sometimes global agendas. Sane people are having a hard time finding someone to follow... we almost got behind Dean but he was cut off at the knees by some really bad press. We wanted to get behind Kerry but he was just .... wrong... he supported the war, he had a lot of baggage, he had no coherent message to rally the public... he was trying too hard to be everyman's savior... To me the only clear enemy of peace and freedom are the Right Wing Republican Extremists. Once a man is elected to office he owes his allegiance to the people who voted for him, not the Party or the financial backers or anyone else. What is happening to our government is a catastrophe, if we can't rally enough concerned, intelligent, sane people to focus on defeating this cancer then we are condemning the country to more war and forcing the World to rise up and crush us.

My earlier rant was better...

Christy called and said she was taking Grandma into the hospital... she was having trouble breathing and a few other problem, Grandma said "No" but after a bit she said "Well OK you'd better take me in" if Grandma says that then you know she feels like hell and is concerned...

Christy called from the Hospital and says that Grandma is having Congestive Heart Failure it happens to lots of folks over 40... she'll be OK but she is going to have to watch her diet and take medication for the rest of her life. The Doctors are sending her home against their recommendations. They gave her a list of symptoms she has to watch out for.

Some Articles I enjoyed this week (Click here)

China's Selective Memory

By Fred Hiatt

Monday, April 18, 2005; Page A17

China, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has made clear that it doesn't think Japan is deserving of similar status.

You might wonder why not. After all, Japan is one of the world's largest contributors of foreign aid and most generous backers of the United Nations, a successful democracy for more than a half-century, with a powerhouse economy and a constitution that forbids aggression.

But here's the problem, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao explained last week: "Japan needs to face up to history squarely." After another weekend of anti-Japanese protests and riots in China, China's foreign minister yesterday amplified that "the main problem now is that the Japanese government has done a series of things that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people . . . especially in its treatment of history."

Truth in history is an interesting standard for great-power status. One intriguing response would be for Japan to embrace it and suggest politely that, if China wants to keep its Security Council seat, it ought to do the same.

There's no doubt, as Premier Wen implied, that some Japanese have a hard time admitting the terrible things their troops did in China, Korea and other occupied Asian countries before and during World War II. Apologies sometimes seem to be mumbled, and textbooks sometimes minimize past crimes.

Recently, for example, Japan's education ministry approved a textbook that refers to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre as an "incident" during which "many" Chinese were killed, though some estimates of civilian deaths run as high as 300,000. News of these textbooks helped spark the anti-Japanese riots in Chinese cities.

But put the issue in some perspective: Many textbooks receive ministry approval in Tokyo, and no school is forced to use any particular one. Issues of war guilt or innocence, and of proper historiography, are debated endlessly and openly in Japanese newspapers, magazines and universities. Some Japanese demonstrate against politicians who won't go to Yasukuni Shrine -- where Japan's war dead, including some who were judged war criminals, are honored -- while other Japanese demonstrate against politicians who do go.

Compare this to the situation in Premier Wen's China. There is only one acceptable version of history, at least at any given time; history often changes, but only when the Communist Party decides to change it.

For example, according to a report by Howard W. French in the New York Times last December, many textbooks don't mention that anyone died at what the outside world knows as the 1989 massacre of student demonstrators near Tiananmen Square. One 1998 text notes only that "the Central Committee took action in time and restored calm." Anyone who challenges the official fiction is subject to harsh punishment, including beatings, house arrest or imprisonment.

And if the 300,000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre are slighted in some Japanese textbooks, what of the 30 million Chinese who died in famines created by Mao Zedong's lunatic Great Leap Forward between 1958 and 1962? No mention in Chinese texts; didn't happen.

Well, you might say, how a nation treats its internal history is less relevant to its qualifications for the Security Council than whether it teaches its children honestly about its wars with other nations. A dubious proposition, but no matter; as the Times found in its review of textbooks, Chinese children do not learn of their nation's invasion of Tibet (1950) or aggression against Vietnam (1979). And they are taught that Japan was defeated in World War II by Chinese Communist guerrillas; Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima and Midway don't figure in.

"Facing up to history squarely" isn't easy for any country. Americans don't agree on how to remember the Confederacy. Russia can't yet admit to Soviet depredations in the Baltic republics. And, yes, Japan too often sees itself purely as a victim of World War II.

But in countries that permit open debate, historical interpretations can be constantly challenged, revised, maybe brought closer to the truth. In dictatorships that use history as one more tool to maintain power, there's no such hope.

China's Communists used to find it useful to vilify Russia in their history texts. These days, for reasons of China's aspirations to lead Asia, Japan makes a more convenient villain. Next year might be America's turn. The reasons may be complex, but none of them has much to do with facing history squarely.

fredhiatt@washpost.com

A High-Tech Lynching in Prime Time

By FRANK RICH

Whatever your religious denomination, or lack of same, it was hard not to be swept up in last week's televised pageantry from Rome: the grandeur of St. Peter's Square, the panoply of the cardinals, the continuity of history embodied by the joyous emergence of the 265th pope. As a show of faith, it's a tough act to follow. But that has not stopped some ingenious American hucksters from trying.

Tonight is the much-awaited "Justice Sunday," the judge-bashing rally being disseminated nationwide by cable, satellite and Internet from a megachurch in Louisville. It may not boast a plume of smoke emerging from above the Sistine Chapel, but it will feature its share of smoke and mirrors as well as traditions that, while not dating back a couple of millenniums, do at least recall the 1920's immortalized in "Elmer Gantry." These traditions have less to do with the earnest practice of religion by an actual church, as we witnessed from Rome, than with the exploitation of religion by political operatives and other cynics with worldly ends. While Sinclair Lewis wrote that Gantry, his hypocritical evangelical preacher, "was born to be a senator," we now have senators who are born to be Gantrys. One of them, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, hatched plans to be beamed into tonight's festivities by videotape, a stunt that in itself imbues "Justice Sunday" with a touch of all-American spectacle worthy of "The Wizard of Oz."

Like the wizard himself, "Justice Sunday" is a humbug, albeit one with real potential consequences. It brings mass-media firepower to a campaign against so-called activist judges whose virulence increasingly echoes the rhetoric of George Wallace and other segregationists in the 1960's. Back then, Wallace called for the impeachment of Frank M. Johnson Jr., the federal judge in Alabama whose activism extended to upholding the Montgomery bus boycott and voting rights march. Despite stepped-up security, a cross was burned on Johnson's lawn and his mother's house was bombed.

The fraudulence of "Justice Sunday" begins but does not end with its sham claims to solidarity with the civil rights movement of that era. "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias," says the flier for tonight's show, "and now it is being used against people of faith."

Posted on Drivedemocracy.org:

"The filibuster they are referring to was lead by old southern Democrats who all switched parties and are now Republicans. The Republicans love to slip a jab that “Democrats” were the ones who opposed civil rights and supported segregation and Jim Crow. What these hypocrites don’t tell you is that when JFK stood up for civil rights, the racists all became Republicans, like Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott."

Comment by Common Sense Mom —

In truth, Bush judicial nominees have been approved in exactly the same numbers as were Clinton second-term nominees. Of the 13 federal appeals courts, 10 already have a majority of Republican appointees. So does the Supreme Court. It's a lie to argue, as Tom DeLay did last week, that such a judiciary is the "left's last legislative body," and that Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, is the poster child for "outrageous" judicial overreach. Our courts are as highly populated by Republicans as the other two branches of government.

The "Justice Sunday" mob is also lying when it claims to despise activist judges as a matter of principle. Only weeks ago it was desperately seeking activist judges who might intervene in the Terri Schiavo case as boldly as Scalia & Co. had in Bush v. Gore. The real "Justice Sunday" agenda lies elsewhere. As Bill Maher summed it up for Jay Leno on the "Tonight" show last week: " 'Activist judges' is a code word for gay." The judges being verbally tarred and feathered are those who have decriminalized gay sex (in a Supreme Court decision written by Justice Kennedy) as they once did abortion and who countenance marriage rights for same-sex couples. This is the animus that dares not speak its name tonight. To paraphrase the "Justice Sunday" flier, now it's the anti-filibuster campaign that is being abused to protect bias, this time against gay people.

Anyone who doesn't get with this program, starting with all Democrats, is damned as a bigoted enemy of "people of faith." But "people of faith," as used by the event's organizers, is another duplicitous locution; it's a code word for only one specific and exclusionary brand of Christianity. The trade organization representing tonight's presenters, National Religious Broadcasters, requires its members to "sign a distinctly evangelical statement of faith that would probably exclude most Catholics and certainly all Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist programmers," according to the magazine Broadcasting & Cable. The only major religious leader involved with "Justice Sunday," R. Albert Mohler Jr. of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has not only called the papacy a "false and unbiblical office" but also told Terry Gross on NPR two years ago that "any belief system" leading "away from the cross of Christ and toward another way of ultimate meaning, is, indeed, wicked and evil."

Tonight's megachurch setting and pseudoreligious accouterments notwithstanding, the actual organizer of "Justice Sunday" isn't a clergyman at all but a former state legislator and candidate for insurance commissioner in Louisiana, Tony Perkins. He now runs the Family Research Council, a Washington propaganda machine devoted to debunking "myths" like "People are born gay" and "Homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals are." It will give you an idea of the level of Mr. Perkins's hysteria that, as reported by The American Prospect, he told a gathering in Washington this month that the judiciary poses "a greater threat to representative government" than "terrorist groups." And we all know the punishment for terrorists. Accordingly, Newsweek reports that both Justices Kennedy and Clarence Thomas have "asked Congress for money to add 11 police officers" to the Supreme Court, "including one new officer just to assess threats against the justices." The Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy-making body for the federal judiciary, has requested $12 million for home-security systems for another 800 judges.

Mr. Perkins's fellow producer tonight is James Dobson, the child psychologist who created Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs media behemoth most famous of late for condemning SpongeBob SquarePants for joining other cartoon characters in a gay-friendly public-service "We Are Family" video for children. Dr. Dobson sees same-sex marriage as the path to "marriage between a man and his donkey" and, in yet another perversion of civil rights history, has likened the robed justices of the Supreme Court to the robed thugs of the Ku Klux Klan. He has promised "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if he doesn't get the judges he wants.

Once upon a time you might have wondered what Senator Frist is doing lighting matches in this tinderbox. As he never ceases to remind us, he is a doctor - an M.D., not some mere Ph.D. like Dr. Dobson - with an admirable history of combating AIDS in Africa. But this guy signed his pact with the devil even before he decided to grandstand in the Schiavo case by besmirching the diagnoses of neurologists who, unlike him, had actually examined the patient.

It was three months earlier, on the Dec. 5, 2004, edition of ABC News's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," that Dr. Frist enlisted in the Perkins-Dobson cavalry. That week Bush administration abstinence-only sex education programs had been caught spreading bogus information, including the canard that tears and sweat can transmit H.I.V. and AIDS - a fiction that does nothing to further public health but is very effective at provoking the demonization of gay men and any other high-risk group for the disease. Asked if he believed this junk science was true, the Princeton-and-Harvard-educated Dr. Frist said, "I don't know." After Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed him three more times, this fine doctor theorized that it "would be very hard" for tears and sweat to spread AIDS (still a sleazy answer, since there have been no such cases).

Senator Frist had hoped to deflect criticism of his cameo on "Justice Sunday" by confining his appearance to video. Though he belittled the disease-prevention value of condoms in that same "This Week" interview, he apparently now believes that videotape is just the prophylactic to shield him from the charge that he is breaching the wall separating church and state. His other defense: John Kerry spoke at churches during the presidential campaign. Well, every politician speaks at churches. Not every political leader speaks at nationally televised political rallies that invoke God to declare war on courts of law.

Perhaps the closest historical antecedent of tonight's crusade was that staged in the 1950's and 60's by a George Wallace ally, the televangelist Billy James Hargis. At its peak, his so-called Christian Crusade was carried by 500 radio stations and more than 200 television stations. In the "Impeach Earl Warren" era, Hargis would preach of the "collapse of moral values" engineered by a "powerfully entrenched, anti-God Liberal Establishment." He also decried any sex education that talked about homosexuality or even sexual intercourse. Or so he did until his career was ended by accusations that he had had sex with female students at the Christian college he founded as well as with boys in the school's All-American Kids choir.

Hargis died in obscurity the week before Dr. Frist's "This Week" appearance. But no less effectively than the cardinals in Rome, he has passed the torch.