"Labor Supporter Says Dean Ignored His Entreaties to Quit"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXCVIII

A remarkable article in today's NYT.

One of Howard Dean's most powerful labor supporters, Gerald W. McEntee, said on Thursday that he had decided that Dr. Dean was "nuts" shortly before he withdrew his support for Dr. Dean's candidacy and begged him to quit the race to avoid a humiliating defeat.

Mr. McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, defended his decision to abandon the campaign, saying he told Dr. Dean that he did not want to spend another $1 million of his union's money "in order to get him a couple of extra points in Wisconsin."

"I have to vent," Mr. McEntee, the often blunt leader of the nation's largest public service union, said in a leisurely interview in his office here. "I think he's nuts."

Mr. McEntee said he reached his assessment of Dr. Dean after watching what he described as a series of halting appearances in Iowa, leading up to his shouted concession speech. He said that he did not believe Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, understood how substantial his decline was after that, and that he was stunned when Dr. Dean did not bow to pressure from labor unions to pull out earlier this month.

"I go to Burlington, and I meet with him," Mr. McEntee said. "I'm telling you, I threw more ice water on his head in about 25 minutes than probably he has ever had. And I said: 'Don't do Wisconsin, O.K.? Don't go in.' I told him to get out. I said, 'You can't win.'"

"He said he's still going into Wisconsin," Mr. McEntee continued. "I said: 'We're not. We're off the train. If you think I'm going to spend $1 million to get you another point after this election is over, you're crazy.'"

A spokesman for Dr. Dean, Jay Carson, said Mr. McEntee's attacks on Dr. Dean could endanger the party's chances of defeating Mr. Bush. "All Democrats have to be united to win this election," he said. "This kind of personal attack is not going to help us beat George W. Bush."

The remarks by Mr. McEntee came the day after Dr. Dean ended his candidacy. In the speech Dr. Dean made on Wednesday, he went out of his way to praise the other two big unions that had joined Mr. McEntee in endorsing him, the Service Employees International Union and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, for sticking with him.

Mr. McEntee, who flirted with endorsing John Kerry and Gen. Wesley K. Clark before settling on Dr. Dean, said his union was probably going to sit it out for a while. "At this point, there's no way we're going to endorse anybody," he said. "I think we need a rest. Maybe in an asylum."

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Just remember this: when AFSCME endorses another candidate, he'll be their second choice — behind the guy they have called "nuts".

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 02/20/04 06:54:57 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

"Court to Consider Roe v. Wade Reopen Request"

An AP report at FNC today:

A federal appeals court has agreed to hear a request from the woman formerly known as "Jane Roe" to reconsider the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.

Norma McCorvey, who joined with anti-abortion activists nearly 10 years ago, is seeking to have the decision overturned, citing what she says is more than 30 years of evidence that abortions are psychologically harmful to women.

A federal district judge threw out her initial request in June, saying it was not made within a reasonable time. But the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear McCorvey's arguments March 2....

See "Court Dismisses McCorvey's Request to Reopen Roe v. Wade" and "'Roe' Seeks to Overturn Historic Abortion Ruling".

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 02/20/04 05:50:46 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

The Novak Exception

A WSJ house editorial at OpinionJournal, today, exposes another facet of mainstream media's liberal hypocrisy:

.... Instead of lauding Mr. Novak for protecting his sources, many of his colleagues in the Fourth Estate seem eager to throw him over the side. Call it "the Novak exception." By that we mean the rule that comes into play when a conservative journalist is involved. No critic could sum this up better than Geneva Overholser did in her New York Times op-ed earlier this month calling for Mr. Novak to betray his sources.

"Never burn a source," writes Ms. Overholser. "It's a cardinal rule of journalism: do not disclose the identity of someone who gives you information in confidence. As a staunch believer in this rule for decades, I have surprised myself lately by concluding that journalists' proud absolutism on this issue — particularly in a case involving the syndicated columnist Robert Novak — is neither as wise nor as ethical as it has seemed."

Now, some of us aren't as surprised by Ms. Overholser as she professes herself to be. A former "ombudsman" at the Washington Post, she is the same media ethicist who recently resigned from the board of the National Press Foundation because it had bestowed an award on Fox News anchor Brit Hume.

But most of the rest of the media establishment has been either silent or has joined Ms. Overholser's new enthusiasm for Big Brother. Typical was the comment in a recent issue of Editor & Publisher — the establishment's trade paper — by Mike Leonard, president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Mr. Leonard loftily declared that "if I were party to a crime I'd fess up and not hide behind journalistic privilege." This is the same Mr. Leonard who uses his own column in the Bloomington Herald-Times to attack the Patriot Act for its "heavy-handed assaults on free speech."

The double media standard here is breathtaking, not to mention depressing for those who believe in a free press. The same Beltway media who thrive on leaks don't seem to mind now that a special prosecutor has been unleashed on one of their fellows and his sources. The media deny that there is a "liberal bias," but it is hard to conclude anything else when they are willing to ignore their own free-press principles in order to take sides in what is at root a political battle about the Iraq war....

See Demomediagate.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 02/20/04 05:37:14 PM
Categorized as Media.

Normalizing Pedophilia

"Battle continues to change perception".

An article at the Express-Times (Easton, NJ), dated Feb. 22. I quote its entirety, because it is already unavailable at the URL I have for it.*

After nearly three decades of failed relationships and emotional discontent, Lindsay Ashford has finally found himself.

Since he was a child, Ashford has always had a deep attraction to young girls but never acted on his urges or knew they had a name.

It wasn't until five years ago, at the age of 30, that Ashford realized why his brief marriage and his countless flings across the United States and Europe always ended the same.

Ashford is a pedophile.

For most of his life, he has buried his emotions and masked his long-secreted attraction. It wasn't until recently that Ashford decided to throw off the shackles of pedophilia and shed light on what he says is a misunderstood "sexual orientation." Last year, he became perhaps one of the first pedophiles in the world to put his name and face on a Web site to publicly profess his love for children.

"I am tired of being forced into the shadows by society," Ashford said recently in an e-mail interview. "I have committed no crime, therefore there is no good reason that I should have to hide myself. As long as pedophiles continue to hide, there is no chance of them ever being accepted."

Ashford, an American expatriate living in the south of France, believes it is time the public learned pedophiles are different from child molesters in that they enjoy a romantic and emotional, but not always sexual, connection with children. He also believes it is time for a child rights movement that will give kids more say in how to live their lives.

Ashford, 35, an unemployed business consultant, is part of a pioneering group of pedophiles from around the world who also believe pedophilia is not a sexual disorder that can be cured by medication and psychotherapy. He believes, rather, that it is a sexual orientation with which he was born, and therefore, cannot deny.

This is a view shared by numerous pro-pedophilia groups around the world. In the United States, the most notorious may be the New York-based North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA.

According to its Web site, NAMBLA's goal is to end the "extreme oppression" of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships by educating the public on the "benevolent nature of man/boy love," and working to abolish age-of-consent laws.

NAMBLA representatives did not return telephone messages left at their New York offices seeking comment, but the association's Web site is clear about its agenda.

"NAMBLA calls for the empowerment of youth in all areas, not just the sexual. We support greater economic, political and social opportunities for young people and denounce the rampant ageism that segregates and isolates them in fear and mistrust," the Web site says. "We support the rights of youth as well as adults to choose the partners with whom they wish to share and enjoy their bodies."

The Danish Pedophile Association is another group with global reach and may offer the most-extensive set of links to similar pro-pedophilia groups on the World Wide Web. Like Ashford, it takes the position that pedophilia is not a sexual disorder, but an orientation that cannot be changed.

Pedophilia "has all the same characteristics as homosexuality, transvestism, fetishism, etc.," said Dan Markussen, spokesman for the 100-member association, which was founded in 1985. "Sexual orientation is defined as a lifelong attraction, which pedophilia obviously is."

Homosexual groups keep their distance

The assertion by pedophiles that their attraction to children is a natural sexual orientation with which they were born has done little to gain them allies. It is especially touchy for homosexuals — who were similarly maligned in the past — because gay advocacy groups used the same argument to win segments of social acceptance over the past two decades.

That, coupled with the notion of man/boy love, has caused gay rights groups to distance themselves from the pro-pedophilia movement to preserve their efforts for acceptance in the mainstream.

"We completely condemn these types of organizations. There's no question about it," said Michael Young, the associate director of regional media for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD.

While many may disagree with the pedophiles' claim that they are born with a taste for the young, a leading American doctor on the subject of pedophilia is willing to concede they are half-right.

"I think it can be both a disorder and an orientation," said Dr. Frederick Berlin, founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

While he believes people who are sexually attracted to children should not feel ashamed of their condition, he also says they should not act on them.

"Many of these people need help in not acting on these very intense desires in the same way that a drug addict or alcoholic may need help," he said. "We don't for the most part blame someone these days for their alcoholism. We do believe that these people have a disease or a disorder, but we also recognize that in having it that it impairs their function, that it causes them suffering that they need to turn for help."

Markussen, the Danish Pedophile Association spokesman, said that Berlin's line of thinking only leads to further public persecution of pedophiles.

"If it were a disease then it should be possible to cure it," Markussen said. "A few therapists have claimed that they could cure pedophilia as well as homosexuality, etc., but follow-up studies have never confirmed this."

Berlin, who also is a consultant on the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' ad hoc committee on sexual abuse, said many pedophiles have an unhealthy tendency to think of children as "mini adults," and want to lavish them with all the rights and responsibilities currently given only to those over the age of 18.

Battle continues to change perception

Pedophiles need to understand that "children are not mini adults, they can be harmed by these activities," he said.

Ashford said pedophiles see children as nothing more than children and are attracted by their innocence.

"This is a total nonsense," he said. "I do not see children as 'mini-adults' at all. I would argue that society sees them this way much more than I do. I see young people as individuals who see the world more clearly than many adults do, due to the fact that they have not yet been conditioned by society to see things the way that society wishes for them to."

Ashford and the other pedophile groups are quick to condemn child rape and those who prey upon children for sex. He said that while pedophiles and child molesters are often linked, they are in reality nothing alike. He blamed the media for distorting the difference.

"The media has an inaccurate conception of what a pedophile is, using the term 'pedophile' synonymously with 'child molester,'" he said. "In actual fact, most pedophiles are not child molesters at all and do not act out upon their desires, while many child molesters are not actually pedophiles. Numerous studies support this claim, and indeed, many anti-pedophile organizations state this as well."

Still, pedophiles, and NAMBLA in particular, fail to get the same support from organizations that traditionally stand up for groups fighting for acceptance, such as the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We're not taking any position on NAMBLA," said Larry Frankel, legislative director for the ACLU in Pennsylvania.

Despite public outrage, pedophiles will continue to press on through their intricate links of Web sites. Both Ashford, who has a daughter from his failed marriage, and Markussen claim to be celibate pedophiles, which they say has led to a feeling of emptiness in their lives.

"For a long time, I found a physical level of satisfaction by having relationships with adult women or with teenage girls over the age of consent," said Ashford, who claims to have twice tried to take his own life. But "emotional or spiritual satisfaction is not a possibility. The feeling of futility leaves me frequently sad and depressed."

Markussen's tale is similar.

"Most pedophiles lead a terrible life," Markussen said. "They can't tell anybody about their feelings. They have to fake interest in adults. Many live in social isolation which leads to weirdness."

Both Ashford and Markussen maintain they have never been arrested for having sexual relations with minors. Ashford said that because he has broken no laws, he does not fear retaliation from law enforcement for his beliefs.

"I am certain that law enforcement knows about me since a number of anti-pedophile organizations have informed me that they have reported me to the FBI, Interpol and other law enforcement agencies," he said. "But since I am guilty of no crimes, I do not see why this is a reason for fear. I believe that there is a greater danger from vigilante activity than from law enforcement. At the same time, I must remain mindful that official harassment and persecution of pedophiles does exist."

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

See also Slippery Slopes.

* P.S. As of 9:00 PM on 02/22/2004, it's here.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 02/20/04 07:28:30 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"What's Wrong With Letting Same-Sex Couples 'Marry'?"

A timely useful article by Peter Sprigg at FRC (emphasis in original):

What's wrong with letting same-sex couples legally "marry?"

There are two key reasons why the legal rights, benefits, and responsibilities of civil marriage should not be extended to same-sex couples.

The first is that homosexual relationships are not marriage. That is, they simply do not fit the minimum necessary condition for a marriage to exist — namely, the union of a man and a woman.

The second is that homosexual relationships are harmful. Not only do they not provide the same benefits to society as heterosexual marriages, but their consequences are far more negative than positive.

Either argument, standing alone, is sufficient to reject the claim that same-sex unions should be granted the legal status of marriage.

Let's look at the first argument. Isn't marriage whatever the law says it is?

No. Marriage is not a creation of the law. Marriage is a fundamental human institution that predates the law and the Constitution. At its heart, it is an anthropological and sociological reality, not a legal one. Laws relating to marriage merely recognize and regulate an institution that already exists.

But isn't marriage just a way of recognizing people who love each other and want to spend their lives together?

If love and companionship were sufficient to define marriage, then there would be no reason to deny "marriage" to unions of a child and an adult, or an adult child and his or her aging parent, or to roommates who have no sexual relationship, or to groups rather than couples. Love and companionship are usually considered integral to marriage in our culture, but they are not sufficient to define it as an institution....

(Thanks, Kathy.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 02/20/04 06:35:43 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"Dean's Doom"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXCVII

My, my, how things can change in a couple of months.

Out of the depths of the backlog — a column by Eric Fettmann at the New York Post, Dec. 24, 2003.

IT'S hardly surprising that Howard Dean wants his fellow Democratic presidential contenders to quit their "negative campaigning." After all, those sharp-edged barbs have just one target these days: Howard Dean. Dean's precarious position as the party's apparent all-but-nominee — even as pundits warn that he may be the Democrats' weakest candidate against President Bush — underscores my pet theory: This campaign's developments have their roots in the two presidential elections of the 1970s.

Last summer, I suggested that Dean was the new Jimmy Carter: a small-state former governor, running as a Washington outsider on an "I'll always tell the truth" platform and energizing early grass-roots support that the party pros were late to notice.

Well, if Dean is this year's Carter, then John Kerry has to be 2004's Ed Muskie. Like Muskie, Kerry is a craggy-faced New England senator, considered aloof and arrogant by many, with a wife known for her troublesome off-the-cuff comments.

And, like Muskie, Kerry was pretty much conceded the nomination by the national news media the moment he announced — and then proved to be a horrendous national candidate.

Back to Dean: The analogy most often being used about him is not Jimmy Carter (with whom Dean has been consulting regularly) but George McGovern. And it's not just Republicans who are saying so.

Nor is it just because Dean seemingly has secured a virtual lock on the nomination by running as an anti-war candidate and unapologetic "true" Democrat, galvanizing the party's activist wing.

No, Dean's resemblance to McGovern these days has more to do with the way his rivals have responded to his campaign juggernaut - with the kind of blistering criticism you'd expect to emanate from the GOP.

Thus, Joe Lieberman last week labeled Dean "a divisive leader," while Dick Gephardt, John Kerry and Wesley Clark increasingly have taken angry pot shots at the front-runner (and at the news media for labeling him as such).

It sounds very much like 1972, when moderate Democrats (notably Hubert Humphrey and Henry "Scoop" Jackson) subjected McGovern to a vitriolic effort to stop his surging campaign at a time when he'd left all his rivals in the dust.

That effort failed, but it re-divided a party still licking its wounds over the Vietnam-inspired split of four years earlier. And it gave the GOP loads of ammunition for use in what became the biggest landslide in presidential history.

Even now, many party officials are warning that - for all his efforts to place himself all over the ideological landscape - Dean's nomination would produce a Democratic disaster.

Like McGovern, Dean isn't helped by his tendency to speak before he thinks. This recklessness (his hometown paper notes Dean's propensity to be "sometimes loose with the truth") will only get him into more trouble, as it did McGovern three decades ago.

Also like McGovern, Dean is trapped by the fact that his core support comes from the Democrats' so-called "crazy base" — an uncompromising faction of true believers who'll see any hint of moving toward the center as a sell-out.

But as the party pros and political historians are all too well aware, the Democrats' leftmost wing may triumph in the primaries, but it hasn't actually sent its favored candidate to the White House since FDR.

Yet these are the people who have galvanized Dean's campaign. They don't want the Dean who cites his balanced budgets in Vermont or his NRA membership — they want the Howard Dean whom the authoritative "Almanac of American Politics" consistently referred to as "one of the four or five most liberal governors in the United States."

Ultimately, though, Dean's candidacy is doomed for much the same reason that George McGovern failed: He is running as the candidate for those Americans who despise their president — at a time when most Americans harbor no such hatred for George W. Bush.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 02/20/04 06:20:55 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.