This weekend the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states got clobbered with a major snow storm. I was luckily down in Central Virginia, and got to see the Blue Ridge beautifully dusted with powdered snow. And with most chores beyond feeding apples to the horses and seed to the birds snowed out, I read a lot. On Sunday morning, unable to get across the mountains to Grace Episcopal Church, I did penance by finishing Stephen Bates’ fascinating if painful study of the Anglican Communion’s rendering over the ordination of gay priests and bishops, A Church At War. Bates, a religion correspondent for The Guardian, does not pretent to be an impartial arbiter of the politico-sexual agony of Anglicans in recent years. He clearly views the whole crisis as having been engineered by conservative evangelical Anglicans, especially in England, who chose sexual issues as just another weapon with which to promote their quasi-fundamentalist drive for power in a faith community that has for centuries balanced Protestant and Catholic traditions and habits. Indeed, Bates almost certainly goes too far in suggesting that the African and Asian bishops who insisted on a condemnation of homosexuality at the Lambeth Conference of 1998 were just instruments of an intra-British ecclesiastical fight. But he knows the Anglican landscape well, and his profiles of the two unintentional protaganists of the current war over sexuality–the unsuccessful candidate for Bishop of Reading, Jeffrey John, and the successfully confirmed Bishop of New Hamphsire, Gene Robinson–are exquisitely wrought. As an Episcopalian, I also took pride in Bates’ argument that Americans handled the subject of gay and lesbian ordinations more honestly, and with greater theological depth, than their British counterparts. At a time when both the religious and secular conventional wisdom holds that conservative movements are the only vibrant and authentic trends in all the great faith traditions, Bates makes a strong case that the conservative ascendancy in Anglicanism is temporary, opportunistic, and ultimately incompatible with the future of the Communion. From what I know of Anglican Episcopalians, even those deep in the heart of Protestant Virginia, I think he’s right.

My ears perked up this morning when I heard on NPR that the president would be discussing the situation in Darfur today with Rebecca Garang, widow of the southern Sudanese leader John Garang, and a government official in her own right.So far as I can tell, the meeting produced no news or public statements. The White House web page showed a photo of Bush and Garang’s meeting, but provided nothing else. And in yesterday’s White House press briefing, there was this depressing exchange:

Q: On another subject, Kofi Annan says that he wants to ask the President next week for troops and equipment for Darfur. Has the administration’s views on that changed at all? Are you more willing to consider that?MR. McCLELLAN: Let me check and see if there’s an additional update on that. Obviously, Sudan and the Darfur region is a high priority for this administration. It’s something that we have led the way on and pushed the international community to address. And Secretary General Annan is someone who is committed to addressing it, as well. That’s why we supported helping get the African Union forces in there, and I think we’ve continued to work with the international community on how best to address the situation moving forward. And I’ll just see if there’s any additional update. I don’t have it at this point.

“I don’t have it at this point” is a nice summary of the Bush administration’s entire approach to Darfur for the last three years.If you’re interested in Darfur but don’t know much about the background, you can check out my review of Gerard Prunier’s book on the subject, which came out yesterday in Blueprint magazine. Prunier’s pessimistic predictions about Western attitudes towards Darfur have so far been sadly spot on.

The quote of the day comes from Ezra Klein over at TAPPED, linking to Josh Marshall’s account of the unlikely success of former FEMA director Michael Brown in facing down Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN):

Reports have Senator Norm Coleman being bested by disgraced FEMA chief Michael Brown in this morning’s hearings. Brown joins George Galloway on the list of contemptible public figures who’ve publicly humbled Mr. Coleman. Quite a shame to see the legendary Paul Wellstone’s seat pass to an empty suit most notable for making the odious look better in comparison to himself.

Let’s please don’t let any Iranian government officials get close to an encounter with Coleman, eh?

Via DKos, I just read an article from The Hill that warms the cockles of my heart: a technical screwup in the budget reconciliation bill recently rammed through Congress by the GOP and signed by Bush could theoretically force a re-vote. All Congressional Dems have to do is object to a unanimous consent motion to fix the problem. They should.Just before the hurry-up House vote on the obnoxious measure, Mark Schmitt provided a good analysis of why it was important to defeat it. Those reasons have been strengthened by the subsequent, aggressive Republican effort to push more tax cuts–far offsetting the “savings” in the budget measure–and by Bush’s new budget proposal for next year, which continues the let’s-cut-taxes-and-let-the-military-fight-it-out-with-every-other-national-priority-for-what’s-left fiscal philosophy of this administration. Democrats have one more shot at some really bad and important legislation. They should lock and load on this one.

A new issue of Blueprint magazine came out today, and it’s chock full of good political news. Mark Gersh (the congressional number-cruncher supreme) and I did a forecast of how U.S. House races are beginning to shape up, and concluded a Democratic takeover is no longer a big reach. As a sidebar to Gov. Tom Vilsack’s cover story on the successes of Democratic red-state governors, I did a brief and even more optimistic evaluation of this fall’s gubernatorial contests. And you might also want to check out Gov. Tim Kaine’s first-hand report on how he won Virginia in 2005.

The continuing saga of “Cartoongate”–the publication and republication in European newspapers of cartoons maligning the Prophet Muhammad, and the spasm of anger and violence that greeted it across the Muslim world–is obviously exposing a lot of misperceptions on both sides of the battle-lines. I am hardly an expert on Islam, but do think one important point about the reaction to the cartoons, and the reaction to the reaction in the West, is worth emphasizing: the basic nature of the offense to Muslim sensibilities.About half the stories in the U.S. press solemnly inform readers that the cartoons are considered “blasphemous” by Muslims, on pretty much the same grounds that Christians would consider cartoons mocking Jesus might be considered “blasphemous.” And that’s got it exactly backwards. The Prophet Muhammad warned against physical representations of human beings generally, and of himself in particular, in order to avoid temptations to idolatry, the worship of anything other than Almighty God. That reinforced the radically transcendent nature of Muslim theology–the insistence on strict submission to the sovereign will of God without the kind of human or quasi-divine intermediaries common to both pagan and Christian traditions. Now I don’t think anyone is under the misapprehension that the authors and publishers of these cartoons were trying to promote an idolatrous worship of the Prophet. So while the cartoons did violate a deeply embedded Muslim antipathy towards physical representations of Muhammad, that’s not the source of the offense: it’s the contemptuous misrepresentation of what the Prophet taught in terms of legitimate Western concerns about Islamic Jihadism. And that’s why non-Jihadist Muslims are if anything more offended by the cartoons than anyone else. Maybe this point is of less importance than the free-speech aspects of this saga, but it’s worth keeping in mind, particularly among those who constantly look for Christian or Judiaic parallels to poorly-understood Islamic beliefs.

For anyone interested in political history generally, or in contemporary debates about “populism,” Michael Kazin’s new biography of William Jennings Bryan, A Godly Hero, is essential reading. It’s being officially released tomorrow, and if this plenary endorsement doesn’t encourage you to check it out, here’s a sneak preview of my review of the book, which appears in the March issue of The Washington Monthly. If you’re smart enough to be a subscriber to TWM, you probably got this issue in the mail today, or will momentarily, with lots of stuff you can’t get online.

I generally don’t pay attention to the Super Bowl, especially when, as has generally been the occasion in recent years, I have no particular attachment to either team. The vast and endless hype over the game does provide an excellent opportunity to do things, like grocery shopping, in pleasantly uncrowded circumstances (if only the DMV were open on Super Sundays!).This particular year, as it happens, I was on the road during the entire game, driving from Amherst, Virginia, to Richmond, to Arlington. As a result, I actually listened to the Super Bowl on a variety of AM radio stations, beamed at me from Lynchburg, Charlottesville, St. Louis, New York and Cincinnati. That means I was able to follow the football game, qua football game, while avoiding the ridiculous spectacle of the Big Commercials that are invariably premiered during the most expensive network television segment of the year. Indeed, I got to hear Dr. John, Aaron Neville and Aretha Franklin do the National Anthem, and even heard a bit of the Rolling Stones halftime show, but without the attendant hype, since the radio commentators were relentlessly focused on football. From the privacy of my car, I was able to assess the game itself as a comedy of crucial errors, with the one real star, to my delight, being Georgia Bulldog Hines Ward.So when it comes to Super Bowl XLI, I recommend getting on the road and disrespecting the television sponsors of the Big Show. It becomes obvious in the light traffic of Super Sunday that it’s really just a football game.

During one week, we’ve lost two of the most influential, and even iconic, American women of the 20th century, Coretta Scott King and Betty Friedan. Both had long and complicated careers in public life, and together represented the drive for the equality of all human beings that redeemed the last century from its horrific and bloodstained legacy of totalitarianism–a legacy for which women, it is important to note, bear virtually no blame.I’ll try to offer additional thoughts on Coretta Scott King on Tuesday, on the occasion of her funeral in Atlanta, and on Betty Friedan later in the week. But for now, may they both rest in peace.

For pure fun, I recommend you read an article by conservative foreign policy pundit Robert Kagan on the Weekly Standard site entitled “I Am Not A Straussian.” Pleading that he could not be a disciple of Leo Strauss because “I have never understood a word the political philospher wrote,” Kagan notes that’s not what you’d think from reading his clips:

I feel the need to set the record straight because I am routinely called a Straussian by students of what is known as neoconservatism, and at the very least this is an insult to true Straussians, who presumably do understand what they’re talking about. There isn’t room here to list all the places where I have been called a Straussian–a Google search for “Robert Kagan” and “Leo Strauss” turns up 16,500 hits. Suffice to say that the immensely erudite Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has referred to me as a “student” of Strauss and Bloom, as has the columnist William Pfaff, and a half dozen other equally learned folk. A professor somewhere named Anne Norton has written a whole book assuming that I am a Straussian. You may ask why didn’t she call me, just to confirm. But that would have been journalism, not scholarship.

The whole piece, which gets into all sorts of anecdotes involving Kagan’s father and Allan Bloom, is hilarious, but it raises a serious point about the tendency of an awful lot of people to think they intimately know the inner motivations and backgrounds of complete strangers they’ve read or read about, or typecasted for some reason.I first encountered this phenomenon personally back in the days when I used to occasionally agree to be the Token Democrat on conservative talk radio shows. Invariably, I’d have to deal with callers who, instead of responding to my cogent and witty representation of the Progressive Cause, would authoritatively announce and denounce my true intentions of imposing socialism, atheism, baby-killing, and general mayhem on an unsuspecting populace. Their general perspective, reinforced by the power of semi- and selective education, was: I’m on to you, bucko.You get the same weird and self-confident omniscience pretty often in the blogosphere. For example, there’s one particular twisted dude (I won’t dignify his ravings by naming him) who pops up in comment threads all over the left and center-left who is certain that the DLC basically exists in order to serve as a front for the American Israel Public Affairs Committte (AIPAC). As it happens, the DLC comments on Israeli-Palestinian issues about once a year, and I’m almost always the guy who writes these comments. I don’t know anybody at AIPAC and have never once read their talking points, so it’s really kind of odd that somebody out there knows that I go to work everyday determined to serve AIPAC’s will.Along the same lines, I cannot tell you how often I get emails and even phone calls from people earnestly informing me of the nefarious activities and actual motives of Al From, Bruce Reed, Will Marshall, and Marshall Wittmann, all of whom work right down the hall from me. I mean, thanks for the tips and all, but I’m not stupid, and probably have pretty good sources of my own for what my colleagues are up to, right?Lest I be accused of elitism, let me make it clear that this kind of I’m on to you, bucko stuff is not confined to comment threads or emails from regular folks; it’s often retailed by bloggers running sites that get a lot more traffic than this one; by diarists on those same sites; and sometimes even by Mainstream Media types who can’t be bothered with real research. They’re all opinion leaders, in their own communities. For example, everybody at the DLC gets a big laugh out of the regular assertions by bloggers, occasionally reflected by print or online journalists, that we spend our evenings at Washington cocktail parties conspiring with the DC Democratic Establishment to maintain control of the Party and keep the outside-the-beltway rabble out. Aside from the fact that the DLC’s political base is largely outside-the-beltway, we ain’t exactly A-list society people here, and are about as likely to frequent Georgetown Salons as Michael Moore. Actually, a lot less likely, and vastly less likely than presumed anti-Establishment figures such as Arianna Huffington or George Lackoff.To be clear, and fair, the tendency to think we know people and institutions we don’t really know is universal. I did a post a while back that in passing mentioned the reputation of The New Republic as a preserve for Ivy League grads, and was immediately informed by someone there that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I posted a correction, but still felt bad for promoting a stereotype of an institution that I thought I knew pretty well.More recently, I entered the moral hazard zone by getting into a colloquoy over at TPMCafe wherein I criticized a trend among some progressives focused on the NSA surveillance story to speak fondly of people like Grover Norquist and Paul Weyrich. In responding to Matt Yglesias’ suggestion that Norquist’s position against the NSA program indicated that Grover wasn’t all bad, I said: “Matt, Grover Norquist is all bad; if you look up ‘bad’ in the dictionary, you see his photo.”Now I’m perfectly willing to stand by the argument that Norquist’s politics are all bad, and indeed, that his opposition to NSA surveillance is based on well-articulated Norquistian positions that are bad as well. But I probably implied that I knew Norquist was an evil person, and that’s a judgment that should be consigned to his actual friends and associates, and to the Almighty. I’ve met the guy exactly once, when I debated him on CSPAN after writing a very hostile profile of him in Blueprint magazine, which now seems more accurate than ever. Up close, I did observe that he looked remarkably average physically, given his self-identification as a macho guy who likes gunplay, uses violent language in attacking his enemies, and once spent a lot of time hanging out with guerillas in Angola and Mozambique. But I didn’t smell the brimstone, see the horns, or hear anything that made me certain I knew the dark depths of his soul.Some bloggers, if they bothered to read this long post, would probably think I’m exhibiting weakness here–an unwillingness to smite the foe, whoever it is, with every weapon of abuse at hand, reflecting a Moderate Milquetoast reasonableness that invites contempt from The Enemy, and that leads down the road to the moral equivalency and “both sides are wrong” perspective of the David Broders of the political world. I plead innocent to the charge. My allegiances are clear; my conviction of the moral superiority of progressivism and the Democratic Party is unequivocal. But if we are, to use the overworn but useful phrase, the “reality-based community,” it’s important that we stick to what we actually know, and let the other side become the party of know-it-alls who really are know-nothings.