General Convention Update from the Spokane Deputation

Received this e-mail Thursday from Bob Runkle, a lay deputy to General Convention for the Diocese of Spokane from St. Luke's Coeur d'Alene, with permission to disseminate. It's a first person account of General Convention and the LGBT discussion.

Today I had the privilege of speaking twice on behalf of two legislative sessions dealing with issues impacting our GLBT and GLBTI members. My testimony was well received by the Chicago Consultation team, in particular by Ruth Meyers, Bonnie Perry and Gene Robinson. For the afternoon session, I was seated near the front of the auditorium and just before the testimony started, Gene Robinson came in and sat next to me. I spoke early in the session, and when I returned to my seat, he congratulated me on my statements. Afterwards, several people from the Chicago Consultation congratulated my on what I said.

Then later, Bonnie Perry called me twice and told me that I had to testify this evening when the B033 testimony process happened. I confirmed that would testify and was early to sign up. I again sat near the front, and just before the session started, Gene Robinson came and sat right behind me. This time he was second to speak, and was very eloquent. I spoke maybe tenth out of the 35+ speakers. When I returned to my seat, Gene Robinson squeezed my shoulder and thanked me. After the whole session was over, several people I didn't know thanked me for my statement.

Both sessions were recorded, maybe live TV (not sure) and there were several hundred people in the audience. The committees were probably 25+ in total both sessions - totally different members. Both the afternoon and evening sessions were filled with emotions, sad stories, talks about suicides, talks about 8 year old children worried because their rector told them their gay sibling was headed to hell because they were gay, talks by both gay and lesbian couples about being denied various rights of TEC because of their sexual orientation; people talking about how the wished the TEC would openly recognize them as full members of God's community. The ratio of pro speakers to con speakers was dramatic - probably 4-5 to 1 on the pro change side of the equation.

The biggest uncertainty is where the House of Bishops will decide later in the GC process. Some question whether the House of Deputies will support the change, but many feel that the House of Deputies will eventually go for change. Much less confidence that the Bishops will support the change. We'll just have to wait and see.

Two big other developments today. In the morning, the House of Deputies met as a Committee of the Whole, and openly discussed the Windsor process and the developments behind B-033, which was passed at the very end of the 2006 General Convention. Mary Beth and I were in Columbus, OH for that convention, and were on the floor of the House of Deputies during the process that led to the passage of B-033. This was a very emotional decision, sort of crammed into the last few hours of the process on the last day. The former Presiding Bishop (Griswold) and the incoming new Presiding Bishop Katherine, came to the House of Deputies with a plea for the House to pass B033 which had been passed by the House of Bishops. The House of Deputies had just defeated all related legislation - the two Presiding Bishops essentially convinced the House of Deputies that with Lambeth in the offing, the General Convention had to give Katherine some sort of message to take to Lambeth that responded to the requests and concern over Gene Robinson's election. Following the presentation of what had happened at the 2006 GC and at Lambeth, the each diocese's delegation to the House of Deputies was instructed to leave your own delegation and to address three questions: How has B033 affected you? How has B033 impacted your congregation/diocese? And what is God calling us to do regarding B033 now? The process took almost 45 minutes and everyone honestly and quietly took the questions to heart and spoke with their counterpart from another Diocese. I shared the process from a deputy from the Diocese of Michigan, who I think expected someone from Idaho and the Diocese of Spokane to be conservative - he rapidly found the contrary - and we learned quickly that our belief structures were similar.

Obama off to a slow start on executive power

I can't say I am all that thrilled with the President this week. Don't get me wrong, I am certainly pleased with his push for the climate change bill, his demands that Congress pay for the health care bill, and his focus on diplomacy and climate change at the G8 summit. It has not, however, been a good week for the third issue in my personal issue triumverate, executive power, an area where the President has fallen twice just this week.

(Note to Facebook readers: This is not a Facebook note, but an automatically imported post from my blog).

The first and more jarring story comes from The Hill, which reports that "The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints." Apparently Obama attached a signing statement to an international aid bill declaring that while he was indeed signing the bill into law, he would ignore certain provisions in it that require restrictions on World Bank and IMF funding.

Signing statements are basically letters a president signs at the same time that he signs a bill. They can serve one of two purposes: One, to express gratitude or other such sentiments about the bill and the people who worked on it, or two, to express policy views on the bill itself, such as declaring that part of the bill is unconstitutional and that the president won't follow it. This second form of signing statement has two purposes: The first is basically an end-run around the checks and balances of a veto: I don't like this bill, but instead of risking Congress overturning my veto, I just won't follow the law. The second is to get the President's views into the official printed record in the hopes that a) the Courts will take his views of the bill's meaning into account alongside Congressional debate and b) indoctrinate the bureaucrats about how to execute the new law.

Bush used the second form of signing statements more than any other president in order to assert his executive authority, rejecting many Congressional bills and yet refusing to veto them. Thanks to Dick Cheney, he subscribed to the Reagan-era unitary executive theory, which basically says that only the president has authority over executive matters, and only Congress can touch legislative matters. The problem is, he labeled virtually everything as "executive." I consider this to be an unconstitutional legal theory given that it a) completely rejects everything about checks and balances and is b) based on a distorted reading of just two or three passages from the Federalist Papers and one line in the Constitution. (I did a 30-page research paper on signing statements in March '08. There is scant academic work on the issue - a fellow Dartmouth '09's honors thesis work on the subject may help fill a void - but Charlie Savage, now of the New York Times, brought the issue to public attention in 2005 with his Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reports for the Boston Globe.)

McCain took a stronger stand on signing statements during the campaign than did Obama, one of the few issues where I agreed with the former more. (And small wonder McCain feels that way - Bush once used a signign statement to effectively veto the McCain torture amendment.) That campaign issue has now become a governing issue, given Obama's initial refusal to enforce the World Bank and IMF restrictions that Congress had passed and he had signed into law. I don't know enough about economics to know whether or not those restrictions are a good thing, but given that they passed the House 429-2, I know that the approach, if not the position itself, is a direct slap in the face of the United States Constitution and a dangerous approach to executive power.

The second executive power issue of the week is the President's veto threat of the Intelligence Authorization Bill currently winding its way through Congress. According to the New York Times, the veto could come if the bill contains

a provision that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees, rather than the so-called Gang of Eight — the Democratic and Republican leaders of both houses of Congress and the two Intelligence Committees. A White House statement released on Wednesday said the proposed expansion of briefings would undermine “a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters.” Democrats have complained that under President George W. Bush, entire programs were hidden from most committee members for years.

I'm no intelligence expert, but I am inclined to disagree with the president here. I don't care much for Speaker Pelosi, but as she said last night on Rachel Maddow, how can we call the current set-up "oversight"?

MADDOW: You can‘t speak out about the content of what you have been briefed on. But isn‘t there a way that you can say, “I‘m a senior member of the house intelligence committee. I believe that we are doing something we ought not to be doing?”

PELOSI: You cannot do that publicly. And that‘s something that I think we have to change in terms of - because your hands are pretty much tied.

MADDOW: You think the rules should be changed in terms what members of the Oversight Committee can‘t fight.

PELOSI: Well, you know, who can you go to? You know, can you go to the chief justice of the Supreme Court? These are issues, mind you, that you can‘t even talk to your staff about. I have a security adviser, but you can‘t talk - you can‘t talk to anybody about it. And that just isn‘t right. That isn‘t right, because it gives all the cards to the administration. And then if you say anything about it, you have violated our national security, and it shouldn‘t be that way.

The real problem here, however, is the mindset, not the details. This "just trust president fill in the blank" approach (Keith Olbermann's words), when combined with the unconstitutional arrogance of the signing statement, indicates a very dangerous understanding of the balance of power on the president's part, former Constitutional Law professor or no. Like deficits, if it was wrong under Bush, it's wrong under Obama, and is certainly a scary direction for our country and its government.

Not Blogging GenCon09

I sure blogged a lot during last year's Lambeth Conference. That won't be the case with this year's General Convention. I am on vacation with my grandparents in Arizona as of yesterday, and get home the day before our diocesan deputation does same. I will definently blog some from here, but it probably won't be about GenCon, and it certainly won't be consistently about GenCon. All the other fabulous Episcopal bloggers from Kirstin to Mimi to James to Susan will take care of that, I am sure.

Sixty!

Al Franken is being sworn in as a United States Senator today. For more, we turn to cartoonist Joe Heller:


H/T Dave Oliveria.

And here, then, is the man who according to Fox News' Brian Kilmeade, is "an embarrassment to America," a "hateful character," "a clown of a person," and "maniacal by nature." To sum it all up, "He is an angry, evil person who wrote two hateful books. He is a bitter, partisan pundit without any depth to his character and the people of Minnesota have thrust him upon us."



For the record, speaking of those "two hateful books" (I wonder which of Franken's three political books Kilmeade didn't finde hateful?), I loved "Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" but could have done without "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot: And Other Observations." The first was well-researched political commentary with jokes and satire thrown in; the second was comedy with a side of politics. Funny, but not really worth the time it took to read. "Lies" was brilliant, though! I've seen few books better-researched.

Musical Monday: Naturally Seven

I'm just sayin': the combination of family and good friends, good conversation, good bourbon, good cigars, and a good movie make for a good evening. And now, for your generally-weekly Musical Monday selection. From NPR's Weekend Edition YouTube channel, members of the band "Naturally 7" show off their individual talents. To see them all come together, just search YouTube for "Naturally 7." The Paris subway clip is particularly a lot of fun.

Milky The Marvelous Milking Cow

Yay!



H/T MSNBC's Willie Geist.

Upholding blog stereotypes everywhere

So about that last post, the one about Sarah Palin... it's true... I am (momentarily) blogging from my parents' house, in my pajamas... but in my defense, since the wireless is currently down, it was written upstairs rather than in the basement!

Sarah Palin: Running in 2012, or just running for cover?

Why is Sarah Palin resigning almost two years before the end of her term in a move almost as shocking as Mark Sanford's downfall?

While I'm sure her stated family concerns are a legitimate worry of the admirably-doting mother, I will argue the following in this post: Palin's own quirkiness, ignorance and alternative reality; Alaskan politics; and the arguments of conservative pundits like Mary Matalin and William Kristol all suggest that Palin wants to run in 2012. This is not to say that she IS running. It is entirely possible, even likely, that she will write her books and give her speeches and then test the 2012 waters, only to discover that this move didn't play out the way she expected it to.

I'd like to believe her stated reasons for resigning, but they sound pretty thin: "Many [outgoing governors] just accept that lame-duck status, and they hit the road, they draw a paycheck, they kind of milk it. And I'm not going to put Alaskans through that." If one buys this reasoning, than all politicians who are not going to run for re-election should resign before their term is over, and that's a load of malarkey. Folks often complain that politicians are always running for re-election rather than governing, and now we're supposed to believe it's bad when they're not running? Moving along, her words about her son Trig were somewhat touching, and for perhaps only the second time in electoral politics I am slightly inclined to believe the family argument. But while I'm sure family is a real concern, it's clearly not the only thing on her mind, given that she also talked about helping her party in a new role. So what else is she thinking about?

The first thought that comes to mind for many is that, given how unorthodox and even bizarre this move is, perhaps a scandal is brewing and she's getting out of the way early. This is, for now, nothing more than a conspiracy theory. It might be logical, but there's no evidence to back it up, so I'm not going to play that game.

The second possibility is that she is preparing for a possible presidential bid in 2012. Pundits aren't so sure, arguing that the move may make such a run harder for her. I'll look at both sides of this debate and come down on the side of, she wants to run. Summing up the arguments of the nay-sayers is Politico's Jonathan Martin:

Many establishment GOP operatives and political commentators of various stripes were withering, both about the decision and the way she announced it — in a jittery, hyperkinetic news conference that rambled between self-congratulation and bitter accusations at the foes she says are eager to destroy her... Even if it's only the small stage of Alaska politics she hopes to escape, skeptics say Friday’s events also diminished and perhaps even demolished what was left of her viability as a 2012 presidential candidate...

And as Slate's John Dickerson reminds us, this also leaves her with less than three years as Governor, hardly a solid response to critics who say she has little to no experience. Finally, I would add that it makes little sense to resign office this early to prepare for a run. The shadow primary (small Iowa speeches, backroom discussions, fundraising, etc.) hasn't even really begun. The PAC and major speech portion won't start until after the 2010 midterms. Usually when someone resigns to run, it's with less than a year to go, not 3.5 years with 2.5 of them before the main event.

It is important, however, to remember this: Sarah Palin makes up her own rules, and then assumes that everybody else plays by them, too. She doesn't live in the same political world as the rest of us. To her, this move just might make 2012-sense. To respond to Dickerson's point that she has no real experience, she thinks she does. Remember that foreign policy crack about Putin rearing his head and coming into our airspace?

A pro-2012 argument I haven't really seen elsewhere is that her popularity in Alaska is sliding. Sure, a 54% approval rating ain't bad, but this is down drastically from a 2007 rating of over 90%, and doesn't compare very favorably with that of fellow-Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski's 76%. With a 35% drop already, where is the floor? Could it be as low as 40%? Unpopularity at home always makes national voters uneasy, and this move might be coming just in time to save that required hometown image.

Conservative pundits Mary Matalin and Bill Kristol (who is a, Palin's biggest backer, and b, a nitwit who never ceases to amaze me) both had good things to say about the resignation. According to the New York Times, "Mary Matalin, a top Republican consultant, called Ms. Palin’s move 'brilliant' although she said she was initially taken aback by the news. But she seconded the notion that the governor’s decision was smart in the sense that it will free her up, as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has been, to travel the country to make inroads with potential voters." The Weakly Standard's Kristol (or is it Kristol's Weakly Standard?) agrees:

She's freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues - and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she'll take a hit for leaving the governorship early - but how much of one? She's probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico [sic] lieutenant governor in charge.

And haven't conservatives been lamenting the lack of a national leader? Well, now she'll try to be that.

As argued above, I don't buy the argument that leaving office this early helps a politician on the campaign trail (see: Hart 1988, Bradley 2000, Romney 2008, Edwards 2008), but clearly some do. Perhaps Palin, like Matalin and Kristol, is one of them. My conclusion, then, is that resigning now hurts Palin's 2012 chances, but that she still did it to help them.

Palin's repeated responses to any and all reporters who ask her harsh questions or criticize her shows me that she has the thinnest skin of any major politician right now. To be fair, many of the criticisms are over-the-top sensationalism, but a national figure has to expect that, and the tough questions about complex issues are only fair. And yet, this woman seems to believe that anyone who dares criticize or disagree with her is an unAmerican idiot. This narrow-minded arrogance will be her ultimate downfall. Although it is way too early to make such guesses, my own no-money-on-the-table-quite-yet prediction is that the Republican Party's nominee for president in 2012 will be Mitt Romney.

Putting Native ministries first

On the heels of my post highlighting several stories regarding Native Americans and Christianity comes this OpEd from the Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. Titled "Learn About Native American Concerns," it chronicles her recent interactions with nations and tribes around the continent and concludes thusly:

I note several common themes in all of these conversations: self-determination for peoples whose cultural traditions and identities often have been suppressed or obliterated; the overwhelming poverty in many Native reservations and off the reservation; the resulting negative impacts on health, lifespan and what we insist God wills for us all – abundance of life; and the gifts of awareness of connection with creation that Native traditions and communities can offer to the wider church.

General Convention will present us with several opportunities to address these issues. I urge you to learn more – about residential schools, about reservation poverty and about the inculturation of the gospel.

Read the whole thing here.

Minnick Votes Against Climate Change Bill

While I am so excited that the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed the House on Friday (while I was on a mountain with no Internet, desperate for news!), I am very disappointed in my Congressman, Idaho's Walk Minnick. Minnick, perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the House (just representing his constituents), voted against the bill. Here is an e-mail I sent his office to express my frustration. (Note: Previous posts have referred to Paul Hodes as my congressman, but this will be the last blog post I make from New Hampshire... having graduated, I'm flying back to Idaho tomorrow! But for the record, Hodes doesn't like warmer gulf waters or higher sea levels, so voted the right way. It's a shamw I won't get to vote for him for Senate.)

Dear Rep. Minnick,

I went to high school in Coeur d'Alene and recently graduated from college in New Hampshire with a degree in government and Native American studies. I am a former Senate intern and have worked for the Spokane (WA) Democrats, and will be moving back to Coeur d'Alene this week.

I am a Democrat with a special place in my heart for the Blue Dogs. I understood your vote against the president's stimulus bill and even agreed with your vote against his budget proposal (boo passing two trillion dollar deficits to my generation!), but your vote against the cap-and-trade bill is, for me, beyond the pale. Joe Biden always asks, what is a politician willing to lose over? What issues are more important to him than his career? In my opinion, preventing the harmful effects of rapid climate change is worth being a one-term congressman, and anyone who disagrees may be a good man but is probably not worth my vote. I will almost assuredly be voting in Coeur d'Alene again in 2010, and the ACES bill will be on my mind when I do. It hurts to be disappointed.