Pat Buchanan is the unrepentant voice of the White Racial Id in the Age of Obama…he is so the trend setter and barometer for the Tea Party GOP on issues of race and white racial resentment. For that, I am grateful. Uncle Pat makes doing recon on his team oh so easy, as they hide their wicked pathologies in plain sight.

Last week Pat Buchanan blessed the public with two articles. The first was a great example of poo poo slinging Right-wing head cheese that included almost every talking point from the Right-wing in the Age of Obama. White racial resentment, symbolic racism, white rage, anti-affirmative action, Obama as anti-white, white victimology, yada yada was all there: Thus, I deem “The View from Martha’s Vineyard” utterly brilliant.

The equivalent to Buchanan’s screed would be having sex with a 18 year old teenager who read one of Ann Hooper’s sex guides and had no practical field experience with the yoni: He knew all the points to hit; but the young Lothario lacked technique—groping and heated penetration that was frustrating to the degree that it titillated. But it was mighty enthusiastic!

Pat Buchanan doubled down with his follow up piece, “Obama’s Race Based Spoils System.”

This is the money shot my friends. One of the old school/new school white angst memes of recent note is that President Barack Obama administers a spoils system for racial minorities. He supposedly hates white people. As a result of his anti-white zeal, Obama has set up a system of institutional “affirmative action” to hand down goodies to the colored folk, goodies which are to the exclusion of hard working white men.

In its most crude White nationalist reading, the time of the Great Recession and Right wing austerity policies will lead to “black uprisings” as the Fed’s budget is cut. In Uncle Pat’s more sophisticated narrative, the story of “black and brown equals government employees,” is a naked dog whistle that the U.S. budget should just be cut because it employs lazy “colored folks” to the disadvantage of “hard working,” “real American” whites.

This is the 21st century version of Bacon’s Rebellion folks. White elites have long known that they can motivate racially resentful white folks to act against their own class interests through appeals to the psychic wages of white supremacy and white privilege. Moreover, the feigned color blind policies of Conservatism do this work through the language of “small government” and “constitutionalism,” what are ultimately ways of talking nasty about black and brown folks without sounding racist.

Conservative wunderkind Lee Atwater said it best and most honestly with his famous quip that:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

But here is my question. Is this new/old narrative of kill the federal government because it employs too many “darkies” just a system artifact, i.e. it exists in the political subconscious of Whiteness and Conservatism and can thus be harnessed without having to use the actual language of race?

Or is the “federal government equals employment for undeserving blacks and minorities” (and others, here meaning you lazy teachers and union members) a top down talking point, where opinion leaders like Buchanan, Fox News, and the Tea Party GOP’s leadership filter it gravity-like in a daily message to the foot soldiers of the Right, who then reproduce and disseminate it broadly?

Written by Valerie DeFillipo for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

On the heels of Vice President Biden’s recent trip to China, the GOP leadership of the House of Representatives issued a misguided ultimatum to President Obama: defund UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, or else.

UNFPA is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data to develop policies and programs to reduce poverty, to strengthen reproductive health programs, and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.  In a world where 215 million women want access to family planning services but do not have it, in which women make up the majority of those infected with and affected by HIV and AIDS, and in which complications of pregnancy remain the leading cause of deaths among women in many countries, UNFPA is needed more than ever before.

This is not a controversial agenda.  In fact, it is one shown to be supported by the vast majority of Americans. As noted by a Guttmacher Institute Report, 91 percent of Americans believe that “every woman on the planet deserves access to quality maternal and reproductive health care.” Another found 89 percent in favor of “health care services, including access to basic health care and family planning services” as a way to promote economic development and advance the status of women and girls.

But as a result of misguided ideology and politics, and at a time when women’s most fundamental rights are under assault, we have been thrust into a dangerous game of falsehoods versus reality- and the stakes are high. What is the life of one woman worth? When reproductive rights are politicized, the health and safety of every woman hangs in the balance.

Each year, over 150 countries around the world contribute to helping UNFPA carry out the vital tasks it has been assigned by members of the United Nations, including the United States of America. As a global leader, the U.S. should continue to show the way.  U.S. financial support to UNFPA affirms the United States’ long-held commitment to save lives, slow the spread of HIV and encourage gender equality. Yet partisan politics continues to play an leading role in U.S. contributions to UNFPA. Despite systematic attempts in past Administrations to link UNFPA’s promotion of voluntary family planning services to China’s one child policy, no such connection exists. In 2002, both a UK parliamentary delegation as well as an independent blue-ribbon delegation sent to China by the U.S. State Department found no evidence that UNFPA supported China’s coercive birth policies. Indeed, the delegation reported that UNFPA advocated against and was a force for changing those policies. Still, UNFPA received no contribution from the U.S. from 2001 to 2007.

Continue reading….

Written by Vyckie Garrison for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

On fundamentalist counterculture & juvenile black market adoption fantasies …

Do you remember when it first dawned on you that your relatives are all a bunch of crackpots and weirdos?  Seems like I was around 8 or 9 — my mother worked all night in the casinos and slept most of the day, leaving me alone to protect my naïve older sister from the depraved advances of Mom’s alcoholic boyfriends and worry about my big brother’s drug addiction. I couldn’t count on my grandparents to help — they were too preoccupied with their own divorce, dating, and remarriage dramas.

“Holy sugar,” I thought to myself, “these people are seriously messed up!”

That’s about the time the fantasies began.  My home, I imagined, was a three-ring circus — and my relatives were the freaks and the clowns.  In my daydreams, I was not really one of them.  No — surely, I was of aristocratic origin.  My REAL family were royalty in a faraway Kingdom and I was born a beloved Princess in a fancy castle with many servants and my own Fairy Godmother.  Somehow, I’d been separated from my blood kin as an infant — I was captured by gypsies and sold in a black market adoption — that’s how I ended up being raised by this group of crazies!

ABC’s Primetime Nightline recently aired a segment featuring the Gil & Kelly Bates family — a conservative, Evangelical mega-family of twenty.  The Bates, who are close friends of JimBob & Michelle Duggar of TLC’s “19 and Counting” fame, hold to the extreme fundamentalist ideals of the growing “Quiverfull movement.”

During the one-hour special, Gil, Kelly, and their children explained the family’s lifestyle which, to all modern appearances, represents a throw back to the imaginary 60’s-style “Leave It to Beaver” family combined with strict, Victorian Era sexual mores and the atavistic gender roles of ancient goat-herders. The Bates eschew all forms of birth control and adhere to the marriage model of the biblical Patriarchs — with Gil as family leader and Kelly as submissive “help meet.”  Kelly and the girls adorn themselves in modest, hand-sewn dresses, while Gil and his clean-cut sons teach bible study and participate in local Tea Party politics.

Aren’t they lovely?  Don’tcha wanna be just like them?

The Bates Family

I sure did!

Continue reading….

Race is an undeniable and complex element of Vick’s story, both because of his style as well as the rarity of black QBs in the NFL. A decade after he became the first black QB to be drafted No. 1 overall, about one in five of the league’s passers is African-American, compared with two-thirds of all players. But after his arrest for dogfighting, so many people asked: Would a white football player have gotten nearly two years in prison for what Vick did to dogs?

This question makes me cringe. It is so facile, naive, shortsighted and flawed that it is meaningless. Whiteness comes with great advantages, but it’s not a get-out-of-every-crime-free card. Killing dogs is a heinous crime that disgusts and frightens many Americans. I’m certain white privilege would not be enough to rescue a white NFL star caught killing dogs.

Dog equals God.

On a day when I read about a noble four legged friend sitting Shiva for his slain Navy Seal human friend, the following piece on Michael Vick was really ill-timed.

I generally like Toure’s writing. But, I cannot cosign this excuse making disguised as an exploration of Michael Vick’s wicked behavior which was featured on ESPN. So, this will be a bit of a promo that I am cutting on the subject. Proceed at your caution.

The following is normative as these types of editorials often are. Moreover, I maintain no semblance of fairness or empathy towards Michael Vick.

In all, this will be one of those moments where the silent majority will agree or disagree with unanimous sentiment. I may lose a few of you. More generally, this honesty and real talk will confuse those who want to brand me as being a stereotypical “liberal” or “progressive.” Black Pragmatists are so much more than that my friends. I embrace that ability to go both Left and Right at the same time. Black folks are and remain both modern and postmodern.

I cannot resist using that gift.

Blackness can be oh so confusing.

We rarely talk about sports here on Alternet or my own site We Are Respectable Negroes. However, sports is also politics. And when we talk about “40 million dollar slaves” and the politicization of the black body, questions of race and representation cannot help but bubble to the surface.

I cannot accept the soft bigotry of low expectations wherein some make excuses for the criminal behavior of people of color out of a sense of pity (or as I term it, “liberal racism”). That does not mean that structures are unimportant. We must always take a full account of the whole person.

Thus, when I talk about street pirate flash mobs, thuggish criminal behavior, or Moynihan’s prescient insight, I accept the structural and institutional variables. But I always zero in on human agency and the power of choice. The latter elements may be truncated and limited by classism, sexism, or white supremacy. Nevertheless, they are still operative and are not universally overriding.

I cannot escape the following though: One of the reasons I love the Black Freedom Struggle and see we/us as part of it, even into the Age of Obama, is that despite how easy it would be to justify the wrong, black folks in America have more often than not chosen the correct path of action.

Michael Vick’s criminal behavior and cruelty towards his pet dogs is one of the sites where all of those questions intersect. His resuscitation in the eyes of some parts of the public is also an opportunity to critically interrogate the role of celebrity in American public life. I would also suggest that on both counts, much of the sports viewing public has failed…and done so miserably.

There is a common error: All matters of criminality and irresponsibility are not necessarily related to “blackness” or “culture.” Certainly, the latter is socially located and specific. It is also contingent on historical circumstances. I bristle when I see folks who should know better seeking to explain the inexplicable, trying to make sense of that which is prima facie absurd and cruel on its face.

In the barbershops and other parts of the black counter-public which I frequent, and where I have brought up my thoughts on Michael Vick, I have been met with anger and at times rage. The latter often comes from man-children who can tell you every stat on the Madden NFL video game, but not how much they have in the bank or in their IRAs–their opinion is significantly discounted in my eyes as they have not learned to grow beyond the idolization(s) of youth.

I have also met smart and wise men who would echo the following.

As Toure suggests:

Here’s another question: If Vick grew up with the paternal support that white kids are more likely to have (72 percent percent of black children are born to unwed mothers compared with 29 percent of white children), would he have been involved in dogfighting? I ask this not to look for an excuse but to explore the roots of his behavior. Vick’s stunningly stupid moral breakdown with respect to dogs is certainly related to the culture of the world he grew up in, which he says fully embraced dogfighting.

But it’s also related to the household he grew up in.

Those smart folks I alluded to above also make claims about the “culture” of the South and how dog fighting is “acceptable” there. Or that this matter isn’t about race, rather it is about “regional identity.” Others offer the experiences of black folks hunted by dogs during slavery. Therefore, our historical closeness to such animals is not the same as that of whites. More well read brothers always go back to Cornel West’s points about cultural nihilism in (black) American life and excuse-make on the basis of neo liberalism’s failings and how deindustrialization and the black culture industry made us all into “victims.”

Insert finger into throat to induce vomiting.

We can grant all of those points and still be left with a puzzle: the killing, maiming, and evil treatment of sympathetic, loyal, and feeling animals by Michael Vick and others is relatively uncommon. Given the macro-level forces that drive race, class, and culture, how do we explain those poor black and brown folks in Katrina who died with their pets, doing everything to save their animal family members? How do we explain those other working class and poor black folks and others who would feed their pets in the time of the Great Recession before they themselves ate?

It is true that we live in a cold world where many children are born into broken homes. Street courage and toughness is prized above empathy and vulnerability. We also live in a moment where some little black boys are told they are “little men” at age the of 5 or 6–”the man of the house”–and then we shake our heads when these same children commit adult crimes and get into mischief because they lack impulse control and life wisdom.

These “little men” are often criticized or handled roughly when they show any weakness, vulnerability, or curiosity. And ultimately for the hard women and hard men who “parent” those kids, human sympathy and empathy are liabilities. Childhood is discarded when they are young. Ironically, it is cultivated and prized when they are adult “baby boys.”

Sadly, many have still not found a way out of that labyrinth.

Toure continues:

So let’s look at him a different way. Let’s see him as someone in the third act of the epic movie that is his life, leading a team that many expect to see in the Super Bowl. Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” is playing underneath because the humbled protagonist has finally overcome his personal demons and has begun living up to his athletic promise. And to those who believe we should judge a man by how he responds when dealing with the worst life has to offer — with how he climbs after he hits rock bottom — Michael Vick has become heroic.And that has nothing to do with race.

Michael Vick is no hero. How did our standards for heroism fall so low such that the ill deeds of humans who kill and abuse their trusting pets, and then go to jail for their evil, is elevated as some great journey of self-discovery and reinvention?

Michael Vick is a piece of human refuse. I would say that if he were black, white, brown, yellow, green, or red. A sense of linked fate does not protect him from the consequence of his choices.

Yet sadly, the union of money ball, plus a stereotypically desperate story of a “ghetto youth at risk” is perhaps one of the few areas where Vick’s race provides any defense for those whose commitments on these issues are more casual and contingent.

If a poor white country boy (or a rich white man) had done Michael Vick’s horrible crimes I am unsure if there would be any redemption song. Well, I take that back. Perhaps there would be, as those who can make millions for others often find forgiveness in a culture where falls from grace and rising again are viewed as noble second acts in life.

Thus then, for Michael Vick, the soft bigotry of low expectations mates with the prime mover of greed and the capitalist bottom line. Nevertheless, his personhood’s balance sheet is still a gross negative.

Animal murderers and dog fighters have a propensity for other criminal deeds. Mark my words, Michael Vick may have gotten a second act in life; he will not be able to correct the character defect which motivates his behavior. Vick will be in jail again, and perhaps next time it will be for an even greater crime.

President Obama now has a clear choice on climate change. Major energy corporations are seeking to build a 1700-mile oil pipeline from Canada’s tar sands to refineries in Texas. The Keystone XL Pipeline would itself carry social and environmental costs: cutting through fragile ecosystems, creating risk of spills, and negatively affecting indigenous communities. But, most significantly, it would be a boon to efforts to exploit the tar sands.

[Cross-posted from the "Arguing the World" blog at Dissent magazine.]

The Canadian tar sands are a particularly dirty source of fossil fuels that could produce egregious carbon emissions. As Elizabeth Kolbert reported at the New Yorker:

[B]ecause tar-sands oil is so heavy, it has to be very heavily processed, which requires tremendous amounts of energy, usually in the form of natural gas. It’s been estimated that, on what’s known as a well-to-tank basis, tar-sands oil is responsible for eighty percent more greenhouse-gas emissions than ordinary crude.

Prominent climate scientist James Hansen has argued (in a now oft-quoted statement) that “if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over” for the climate.

Before the end of the year, Obama’s State Department must choose whether to approve or deny the pipeline project. To dramatize the president’s choice, environmentalists have commenced two weeks of civil disobedience. On August 20 they began daily waves of sit-ins in front of the White House. As of this writing, near the end of week one, 322 people have been arrested.

Billed as the “biggest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement for many years,” the two weeks of sit-ins and arrests in summer-recessed Washington, D.C., have thus far had difficulty in creating the tension that, at times, allows acts of civil disobedience to explode into mass public spectacles. The protests have not had a single, climactic date around which many thousands might mobilize. And since the deadline by which Obama must make his call is months away, administration officials have been able to drag their feet.

That said, the two weeks of action are creating many opportunities for press coverage of the issue. Protest leaders such as author Bill McKibben, who was arrested early on, have been using the ongoing actions as reason to make the rounds in the media.

The protests don’t need to become front-page news in order for them to have an impact. McKibben correctly notes that the primary effect of this advocacy is to raise the stakes for Obama in terms of his support among his base in the environmental community. The fact that prominent individuals (McKibben, along with Hansen, Wendell Berry, Naomi Klein, Danny Glover, Gus Speth, Jane Hamsher, and others) have devoted their energies to highlighting this cause—and have rallied hundreds of others to make the sacrifices entailed in getting arrested while speaking out against the pipeline—has turned what might have been an easy-to-ignore bureaucratic decision into a line-in-the-sand issue for environmentalists.

Obama’s credibility as a leader concerned about climate change is now publicly in question; he has the power to please corporate sponsors or environmentalists, but not both.

Whether the president will make the right choice given his recent track record is, shall we say, doubtful. If he did, Andrew Leonard pointed out at Salon, Republican opponents would no doubt paint him as a job killer insensitive to high gas prices. Nevertheless, the week of protest has helped to make clear what the right choice is. The actions in Washington have given trade unionists such as Joe Uehlein the opportunity to make the case that “’jobs vs. the environment’ is a false choice.” And, in a nice media coup for the arrestees, they gave the New York Times occasion to editorialize that the administration “should acknowledge the environmental risk of the pipeline and the larger damage caused by tar sands production and block the Keystone XL.”

The protests point to an increasing militancy among climate change activists that has been developing steadily in recent years. All those concerned about the planet should very much hope that the tar sands pipeline is halted before it is ever approved. But if the project does go forward, it will not be the end for those organizing civil disobedience on this issue. Should pipeline construction be approved, it is not hard to imagine arrests involving much more than symbolic acts of protest. Instead of sit-ins at the White House, we may well see bodies before bulldozers on the Western plains.

Written by Sarah Elspeth Patterson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

This week, the public humiliation of Nafissatou Diallo that has been the “DSK Rape Case” has come to a close, as all charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn have been dropped. This motion marks the end to a case that has amounted to little more than a character assassination of a rape complainant who has endured a litany of shame-driven media accusations, including but by no means limited to the Post’s declaration that she “wasn’t just a girl working a hotel – she was a working girl.” This unsubstantiated claim of her sex worker status, in addition to problematic framings of her race, immigrant status and background, has been used in the media to reinforce the idea that she is not a credible witness and therefore unworthy of having her rape charges validated in a court of law.

It’s been a rough summer for rape cases going through the DA’s office in New York City, with no lack of victim-blaming happening all around.

Continue reading….

Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Using a highly unusual “emergency” process, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is expected on Friday, August 26th to issue guidelines under what is known as a Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) law that will treat clinics providing first trimester abortions as a form of hospital. There are no medical or public health indications for such regulations.

In March, McDonnell, a virulently anti-choice Republican, signed SB 924, a law that requires clinics performing first trimester abortions to be regulated as hospitals. The bill gave the state’s Board of Health 280 days to create and to enact the new regulations. Because McDonnell has invoked “emergency” status for the process, it is expected that temporary regulations–which will first be issued tomorrow and voted on by the Board of Health in September–will be put in place for a period of up to 18 months while permanent rules are developed through a more established process.

The catch is this: the McDonnell Administration is bypassing virtually all democratic processes in place for the creation of such regulations. Under the emergency designation, the normal process for public review and comment on regulations, which usually involves several opportunities for expert testimony and public comment and an economic impact assessment among other considerations, has been completely thrown out. Instead, draft regulations will be released tomorrow, and then voted on at a meeting of the Board of Health on September 15th. Instead of any public hearings or comment periods, the Board meeting will be the only time for the public to speak out.  After the board votes on these temporary regulations, they will go to the governor for final approval. Moreover, the McDonnell administration has claimed it has the authority to rewrite without any further notice or input any temporary regulations presented to it for signature.

I’d say that is as close to government by fiat as it gets.

Analysts suggest that the temporary regulations will have an insidious effect of creating uncertainty among clinics as to what to do. Normally, such regulations would include a period of time–two years–during which clinics can make accommodations for any changes that might be necessary to comply with law, such as changes in physical structure, which can be expensive.  But by issuing temporary regulations, the McDonnell Administration puts existing clinics on an uncertain path: Do they take on the expense of adapting to regulations that might be thrown out or replaced in 18 to 24 months when more “permanent” regulations are published? Or do they take the risk of being found in violation of medically-unnecessary regulations that are costly and impede their ability to provide services to women in need?

Continue reading….

It took years for Arizona to recover from right-wing Governor Evan Mecham’s disgraceful act to rescind the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in 1989.

Now, on the eve of the unveiling of the national memorial to the civil rights leader in Washington, DC, Attorney General Tom Horne has joined a lone county in Alabama to make Arizona the first state to file a suit against the Obama administration to strike down parts of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 — spurred by the horrific violence encountered by King and civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama — as unconstitutional.

“President Lyndon Johnson’s high spirits were marked as he circulated among the many guests whom he had invited to witness an event he confidently felt to be historic, the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act,” King wrote. “The bill that lay on the polished mahogany desk was born in violence in Selma, Alabama, where a stubborn sheriff … had stumbled against the future.”

Claiming that sections of the Voting Rights Act are “either archaic, not based in fact,” Horne has indeed stumbled against his own future and Arizona’s unfinished history of voting rights violations.

Horne, of course, is infamous in Arizona for his controversial witch hunt and eventual ban of bilingual education and the acclaimed Mexican American Studies Program in Tucson. The Attorney General has openly lied in the past about his history of bankruptcy and has the unique distinction of being banned forever from the Securities and Exchanges Commission after he “willfully aided and abetted” securities law violations.

His law suit this week marches in step with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and her Arizona Gone Wild legislature’s obsession to defy federal authority over gun laws, health care, immigration policy, and border security.

US Attorney General Eric Holder immediately responded to Horne’s suit: “The Department of Justice will vigorously defend the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in this case, as it has done successfully in the past.”

Despite the fact that President George W. Bush signed the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act in 2006, it clearly rankles Horne to be included as “covered jurisdictions” among Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia and a handful of others states for “preclearance,” which requires Department of Justice approval for any changes in election policy, practices or administrative functions.

Echoing the state’s right mantra of notorious State Senate President Russell Pearce, who is currently embroiled in a recall election, Horne declared in his suit: “The State of Arizona is a sovereign state within the United States of America.”

The Canadian-immigrant Horne, who likes to claim that he attended the historic March on Washington in 1963, could benefit from a conversation with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) on the deadly violence during the “Bloody Sunday marches” in Selma, Alabama in 1965, which led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Horne could also benefit from a lesson in Arizona voting rights history — and present reality.

In preparation for the reauthorization vote in 2006, an extensive report by Arizona State University researchers on Arizona’s voting rights record from 1982-2006 cited numerous violations and concluded: “Arizona’s record since 1982, when the temporary provisions were last reauthorized, shows that the state still has a long way to go.”

It gets worse.

Last fall, a report by Common Cause ranked Arizona at the bottom of swing states for the worst voting laws. According to Tova Wang, author of the report, the strained atmosphere behind Arizona’s notorious SB 1070 “papers please” immigration law was just the beginning of larger voter irregularities: “One of the biggest concerns in this election, especially in Arizona, is that the ugly immigration debate will be leveraged into the elections and the voting process. We are worried about the use of vote suppression tactics such as challenges at the polls and bogus charges of noncitizen voting being used as a way to impose obstacles to voting that could affect a wide range of voters, but primarily people of color. Just the climate that has been created could have an impact on its own.”

Here are some of the “notable obstacles” to voter participation in Arizona:

Citizens must register to vote a full 29 days prior to the election, which could block some Arizonans from participating.

Restoration of voting rights is only available to individuals with a single felony conviction. Persons with two or more felonies are permanently disenfranchised. Not only is it problematic that many people who have served their time are disenfranchised, but the distinction between single and multiple offenders confuses even election officials, leading to the potential disenfranchisement of people who should have their rights restored.

Arizona is the only state that requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. Many citizens are not able to produce such documentary proof.

All voters must present either one form of photo ID or two forms of non-photo ID. If the voter does not have what the poll worker deems the requisite identification, he is forced to cast a provisional ballot. Some voters will not have the necessary ID.

Voters who cast conditional provisional ballots must provide proper identification to the county recorder within three to five business days in order for the ballot to be counted. Provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct will not be counted.

Arizona’s laws regarding challengers at the polling site are lax: voters may be challenged by any qualified elector of the same county and standards for initiating challenge procedures are low.

The absence of specific laws targeting deceptive practices such as dissemination of misinformation about the electoral process leaves voters vulnerable to confusion and disenfranchisement.

Arizona has historically had inadequate outreach to certain language minority communities covered by the Voting Rights Act, and gaps in coverage for qualified and trained bilingual poll workers.

Throughout the U.S. military, with chapters on virtually every military installation worldwide, lurks an organization of over 15,500 fundamentalist Christian military officers who think their real duty is not to protect and defend the Constitution, but to raise up “a spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit.” These officers belong to an organization called the Officers’ Christian Fellowship (OCF), and range in rank from future officers in ROTC and at the U.S. military’s service academies to generals and admirals.

Unlike the other fundamentalist Christian para-church military ministries, which  employ retired military personnel to be their “insiders,” about 80 percent of OCF members are true insiders. They are current military officers, many of them commanders with authority over large numbers of service members and even entire bases and larger commands.

When people ask why our service members don’t just complain through military channels about religious issues, and instead come to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) for help, our answer is usually just to say that these service members are afraid to go to their military superiors. Most people, however, probably don’t understand why so many service members have this fear of going to their superiors and filing formal complaints, so I thought a little more of an explanation might be helpful, and explaining a bit about OCF is a good place to start.

Imagine for a moment that you’re a service member whose entire unit just received an email blast from your superior officer on your official military email, with the subject line “Why We Serve.” You open that email to find a lengthy religious message that ends with the following:

“We are blessed to be able, through our lives in the military, to demonstrate the message of salvation to those who have not heard or received it. It was by God’s grace through faith that we were brought fully into His family and presence. Our love for Him motivates us to serve Him in our military, to serve and work for our families, and to serve and work to enable the message of salvation to reach those who have yet to accept Him as Lord and Savior. As Jesus spoke in the Gospel of John.

“Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him (John 14:21).”

You know that it is completely inappropriate and against military policy for your superior to be using official email to send religious messages to their subordinates. You want to report the officer who is sending out emails like this, but who do you report them to? Your chain of command, right? But wait, the first link in your chain of command is the officer who just sent out the email. And if you go file a complaint through other military channels, it’ll get back to the officer who sent the email, who has the power to make your life miserable. See the problem?

(The above was a real situation reported to MRFF. The content of the email titled “Why We Serve” was an essay from the OCF website, written by a retired 3-star general and past OCF president.)

What if you’re being hounded by one of the fundamentalist Christian para-church ministries on your base? You know it’s wrong for your superiors to be allowing people from this ministry to invade your barracks to “encourage” you to attend their next Bible study. But it’s your chain of command who are allowing this, so they must approve of it, and you’re smart enough to realize that complaining to the very people who are allowing this to happen would be a very stupid move, especially if you are a soldier in a basic or other training situation. The last thing you want to do is stand out as being non-religious or of the “wrong” religion.

Now, what if you happen to be young service member with the guts to step up and complain about what this para-church ministry is doing? Well, you could go to your unit’s chaplain, right? Chaplains have the authority to stop the activities of an outside religious group. But, of course, it was probably your chaplain who invited them there in the first place, so they’re not likely to take your complaint too seriously.

So, who else has the power to stop these civilian “missionaries” from trying to save you? Well, your commanding officer. But what if your commanding officer is a member of the OCF? Well, then you’re kind of out of luck because the OCF endorses and supports the work of para-church military ministries like Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry, which has come right out and said that their goal is to turn the U.S. military into a force of “government paid missionaries for Christ” and “evangelize and disciple all enlisted members of the U.S. military,” and Cadence International, which preys specifically on young service members in training who are likely to be facing deployment soon, stating as a reason for their success, “Deployment and possibly deadly combat are ever-present possibilities. They are shaken. Shaken people are usually more ready to hear about God than those who are at ease, making them more responsive to the gospel.”

If you’re a service member who has the misfortune of having an OCF member somewhere in their chain of command, you’re probably already fighting a losing battle, and with about 12,400 current officers in the OCF (80% of their total membership) in a military that has about 240,000 officers, the odds of any given chain of command having at least one OCF member in it are fairly high.

How much help can a service member who has a complaint about being proselytized by a superior, chaplain, or para-church ministry expect from an officer who’s an OCF member? Let’s look at some statements from OCF’s latest batch of nominees for the organization’s council positions. Reading some of these statements should give everybody a pretty good idea of the OCF’s attitute towards the Constitution, and their desire to circumvent it to convert the military.

“The main challenge is to continuously strive to advance the kingdom of Christ to ensure a godly America in a hostile world that continues to reject and resist the truth of Jesus Christ and his Holy Word.”

“OCF faces a challenge that is critical to our nation’s military health–the “challenge of balance” — assisting chaplains and military personnel in keeping the First Amendment from becoming an idol of religious authority.”

“In a society and military community that increasingly leans towards secularism and political correctness, how does OCF aggressively proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ so that everyone has a life changing experience with God?”

OCF “must permeate the ranks and enlarge our membership and presence in the military.”

And my favorite:

“I think the most important issue facing OCF is the growing fear and reticence among many Christian officers to live out their faith and present biblical truth to those they lead. Many officers are afraid to acknowledge their faith in Jesus in private and many more will never publicly stand up for their faith based upon a fear of offending or violating the uniform code of military justice, command policy or regulations.”

U.S. miltary officers who are afraid of “violating the uniform code of military justice, command policy or regulations” by publicly espousing their religious views is a problem? To the rest of us that’s a solution!

As already mentioned, OCF members range in rank from cadets to generals, so I’ll end this with a quote from an OCF council nominee who was “saved” by OCF while at the Air Force Academy, and one from a 2-star Marine general, a former Catholic who doesn’t seem too fond of Catholics (who, of course, aren’t “real” Christians).

This is from the “Personal Testimony” section of the OCF council campaign pitch of Major Warren “Blair” Watkinson II, who was saved by OCF from his heresy of accepting religious pluralism while at the Air Force Academy.

“Though I grew up attending church every week, by the time I was in college, I had developed post-modern views, believing there were many ways to heaven. God used the Air Force Academy OCF cadet ministry and leaders to lovingly confront my heresy and make me aware of my need for a Savior.”

And this is from the “Personal Testimony” section of Major General Melvin G. Spiese’s OCF council campaign pitch, in which he publicly calls Catholicism, the religion of about 25 percent of the military, “obedience to a dead Lord.”

“I was a practicing Catholic and changed to Anglicanism as an adult. I met all church rituals duties and obligations. While attending a chapel sponsored program hosted by COL King Coffman, I was questioned of my faith and challenged to make a non-ritual profession on the altar of the main Protestant chapel. I did, and it changed my life as I finally understood and met the living Lord — a step beyond obedience to a dead Lord.”