Like many Americans, I have temporarily put aside poltical differences to focus on the NCAA basketball tournament.Unlike many Americans, I am searching for analysis of the women’s, not the men’s tournament.In part that’s because my preferred school, the University of Georgia, is not in the men’s tournament, while its women’s team, as always, is in the hunt, seeded sixth but considered dangerously capable of going higher.But in part it’s because the women’s college game is more fun to watch from a purist’s perspetive. They always block out. They rarely miss layups. They generally hit their free-throws. And their 3-point shooting is usually strategic, not egocentric.Aside from my attachment to the Lady Dogs, my interest in the women’s game goes back to early childhood, when I had several aunts who played small-town high school basketball down in Haralson County, Georgia. One year I attended a regional championship game with my Aunt Sylvia, who spent the entire 48 minutes screaming at the refs to call “3 seconds in the lane” and other technically accurate but rare penalties. I learned then that women in many respects took the game more seriously than men.So I’ll watch the men’s tournament, but will reserve my real passion for the women’s game, where all the old virtues of basketball, with few of the new moneyed vices, live on.

In a long-delayed response to the emergence of the Religious Right, there are stirrings of life on the Religious Left, reports the intrepid Amy Sullivan in (subscription-only) Salon. Her departure point is a press conference held last week by leaders of five mainline Protestant churches (the Protestant Episcopal Church, the United Methodists, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) denouncing George W. Bush’s proposed budget as “immoral.”While greeting this development, Sullivan goes on to indict “liberal” Protestants (the primary components, outside the African-American churches, of the “Christian Left”) for a self-marginalizing, secularized approach to political engagement in the past, complemented by a hands-off attitude towards religion by these churches’ natural allies in the Democratic Party. She also notes that mainline churches have been frequently paralyzed by internal denominational fights in recent years, exemplified by the current travails of the Episcopalians over same-sex unions.If anything, I suspect Amy’s being too nice to her fellow (and my fellow) mainline Protestants. Look at that list of denominations represented in the anti-Bush press conference again. They were once the dominant religious, cultural and political forces in America. They have been shrinking in numbers, and in influence, for decades, even as fundamentalist and pentecostal denominations grow like topsy. There are certainly demographic and sociological reasons aplenty for their decline, but you don’t have to be a conservative to understand that religious liberals have largely lost their prophetic voices somewhere between weekly worship services and the host of civic and political organizations they support with great energy and commitment.The steady secularization of mainline Protestantism over the second half of the twentieth century is an old and familiar story. But its relationship to the counter-secularization now championed by the Christian Right is less well understood. It’s fairly safe to say much of the political and social teaching being hurled at congregations across the religious spectrum is dangerously disconnected from its scriptural and theological roots. This gives religio-political conservatives an advantage, given the natural tendency of religiously minded people to value what they understand as “traditional values.” And it gives fundamentalists a crucial advantage, because they can selectively find “inerrant” scriptural support for any number of right-wing cultural and political positions.That’s why the revival of mainline Protestantism as a religious force, and as a poltical and cultural force, point in exactly the same direction: a movement to rediscover and proclaim the profoundly un-conservative message of the Law, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Church Fathers, and Church History, with a minimum reliance on modern sociology or Identity Politics.Let the Christian Right be the faction of bad physical and social science, bad economics, and distorted, selective history. Let them be the ones who dress up secular agendas in “God Talk.”Sure, the Religious Left needs to adopt better organizational methods, better communications strategies, and better tactics. But above all, “liberal” Christians need to save themselves as religious communities before they can fulfill their calling to help redeem the world for truly Christian values.

Today’s latest Washington Post installment of the Jack Abramoff/Indian Casino/Ralph Reed story is especially surreal. James Dobson puts in a guest appearance in a supporting role to Reed in pledging to whip up evangelical Christian opposition to a rival to Ambramoff’s client. The senior leadership of the U.S. Department of the Interior drifts in an out of the story as they weigh various Indian casino bids and warily eye politically connected suitors. Huge amounts of money change hands. Golf junkets abound. If you didn’t know this was nonfiction, you’d almost swear the whole spectacle was a promo for some new HBO series called The Cross and the Croupier or Indian Givers or Triple Cross or something. If this doesn’t become the Watergate of this era, it’s not for lack of drama, intrigue, or tragi-comedy. Don’t wait for the DVD; pop some popcorn and read it now.

Garance Franke-Ruta’s recent American Prospect article on key differences between Left and Right bloggers has created an interesting and useful debate. But I suspect she may be spurring a different, but equally useful, debate in a new post on Tapped that challenges the idea that bloggers are mainly “citizen-journalists” who represent an entirely new phenomenon in political commentary.Franke-Ruta goes through a whole list of leading Left and Center-Left blogs, including this one, and notes the various credentials–in terms of background, experience, institutional ties, and even social connections–their authors bring to the keyboard. Her post will probably set off a backlash among bloggers who (a) fear the blogosphere is being taken over by Washington and/or Establishment Types, and (b) really freak out at the idea that Washington and/or Establishment Types are eating, boozing, and shmoozing together in order to promote each other at the expense of their less-connected peers.I did a long post last fall providing my own, tentative take on the relationship between blogs and other forms of political expression, and concluded that the whole phenomenon represents the confluence of a new technology with a classic market failure in political journalism and advocacy.Alternatives to market failures create all sorts of new outlets for creativity and expanded involvement, and that’s been the case with blogs. But alternatives to market failures also produce a market response, and that’s why so many Washington political institutions have started up or blessed blogs.So: does that mean the Establishment is neutering the blogosphere? No, for two major reasons.First, the Establishment response to the growing influence of online competition has loosened up the Establishment itself in significant ways. Kos is now a player in Democratic campaign planning. Nobody involved in Democratic strategy on the Social Security issue can ignore Josh Marshall. And institutional blogging is changing institutions. The stable of young bloggers at the Prospect is changing that staid journal’s image and emphasis significantly. I can tell you a lot of people seem to be taking a new look at the DLC thanks to this blog and The Moose. The Center for American Progress and the New America Foundation are now sponsoring blogs, along with most political magazines. Co-optation of market-share-threatening trends is generally a two-way street. So the invasion of the blogosphere by the Establishment is a tribute to the medium’s influence.But secondly, whatever advantages Establishment bloggers have, everybody else remains just a click or a google-search away, and the quality and value-added of non-Establishment blogs continue to bubble up. I’m forever discovering that some blog I read now and then is being written by somebody living in America rather than Washington–someone with a day job who is light years away from getting a hand on the greasy pole of print or electronic journalism, or from a gig with a major political outfit or think-tank. Like most low-mid-major bloggers, I get a constant stream of email from people wanting me to link to their blogs, and the backlog of requests is a constant source of anxious guilt.But they are there, in far greater numbers than the people lining up for interviews with Establishment outlets, and boasting qualifications–like the ability to write, and an actual knowledge of actual conditions around the country–that their Ivy-educated peers often don’t have.Yeah, many bloggers are people who’d be doing faily well in the punditocracy if the internet did not exist, and yeah, the internet has created opportunities for intelligent commentary and advocacy by a whole lot of folks who didn’t go to Harvard and thus can’t get in the door at The New Republic. Let’s hope the supply and demand curves ultimately begin to converge. In the mean time, there’s space for us all.

Since I just made a point of bragging about my good-ol’-boy populist credentials, I should hasten to explain this title, which alludes to one of the few concepts I remember from law school, means “The damn thing speaks for itself like a deacon caught in a ginmill.”And here’s the hook: according to the subscription-only Congress Daily, during a congressional hearing on child care funding in connection with the endless effort to reauthorize the 1996 welfare reform law, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) said this: “The issue of child care is a Washington-based issue. It is not an issue out in the states.” Methinks ol’ Rick will be explaining that one to the working parents of Pennsylvania for a good while as he barnstorms the state posing as the avatar of “compassionate conservatism” during his re-election effort next year. Kinda reminds me of the moment during the 2000 presidential debates when George W. Bush said: “Insurance…that’s a word they use in Washington, DC!” Sometimes the truth peeks through the demagoguery. And it speaks loudly.

We political bloggers sometimes fall prey to our own obsessions, and I’m sure some of us are gripped by the delusion that the whole hep world is breathlessly tuned into the Social Security debate, the bankruptcy bill, or the various machinations of Karl and Grover and HoHo, or the jesuitical DLC. But let’s get real: none of this stuff is more than a tinny little sound compared to America’s real preoccuption these days: the trial of You-Know-Who.Now I’m sure that traffic-savvy bloggers like Wonkette (or the Substitute Wonkette, or the Wonkette-Mini-Me, or whoever the hell is womanning that sex-and-booze-soaked Font of Hilarity these days) will constantly find ways to use interest in the West Coast Offense to draw readers to the latest batch of Washington Gossip. But I’m going to be a Real Democrat and stand up for my values here, and declare NewDonkey an official Jacko-Free site. I don’t care if political news gets so slow that I’m writing about GAO reports on traffic-light synchronization; I just won’t go to Santa Maria.Although it violates the religio-ethical principal of Avoiding the Near Occasion of Sin, I am not swearing off references to anyone named “Jackson.” Jesse, Scoop, Andy–these are all legitimate Jacksonian topics. But no Moonwalking, I swear.In taking this hard line against Jackocentrism, I expect at least a few emails accusing me of blogo-snobbery. That’s not fair. I’m one of the few political bloggers who regularly uses “ain’t” and “sho nuff” and other crackerisms. Unlike David Sirota, I learned my populism at my grand-daddy’s knee back in the day, not by working on some 2004 campaign. And with March Madness on the horizon, I’ll certainly be watching a lot of cheesy beer-and-junk-food commercials and heading for the kitchen with Pavlovian regularity.But you have to draw a line somewhere, and as Martin Luther famously said: “Here I stand; no other can I do.”

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan made a big speech at the Council of Foreign Relations today deploring the federal government’s fiscal profligacy as representing the single largest threat to the economy’s future. Bigger than trade deficits. Bigger than low savings rates.So maybe that’s why he recently called for making the 2001 tax cuts that largely created the fiscal mess permanent, along with additional measures to enable high-income Americans to shelter even more income from taxation through savings accounts.Hate to sound like a broken record about this, but it still just blows my mind: four years ago, Greenspan endorsed the Bush tax cuts on grounds that the United States was in danger of prematurely retiring the national debt. And now he’s endorsing new tax cuts as a way out of ever-rising national debt. Just like his buddies in the Bush administration, Greenspan has a single answer for every question and every circumstance, and that’s why his credibility is collapsing like a grossly overvalued stock in a bear market.

As the heir of a long line of debtors, from a state founded as a debtors’ prison, I was genetically unhappy with today’s Senate passage legislation tightening grounds for filing bankruptcy.But there was better news on a more celestial issue this week: the Bush administration’s lame-o “Clear Skies” air pollution proposal got stopped again in the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, and may be dead for the year. (It’s too complicated to get into in one blog post, but the biggest problem with “Clear Skies” is its avoidance, contrary to a 2000 Bush campaign promise, to impose any limits on the most dangerous greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.)And even as the administration lost an environmental battle on earth, it’s not exactly storing up treasure in heaven. Leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals spent much of today in Washington working on a statement endorsing strong action on global climate change. They were addressed by Joe Lieberman, who with John McCain is cosponsoring the most prominent proposal for capping carbon dioxide emissions and guiding the U.S. towards something like a parallel track with the Kyoto process that Bush unilaterally abandoned. The small remaining band of moderate Republicans (exemplified by McCain and by Lincoln Chafee, who helped stop Clear Skies in the Senate) is already in revolt against the administration’s retro environmental policies. If a slice of politically active evangelical Christians get a little greener as well, we could finally see the end of a long period of gridlock on environmental policy, and a stretch of better weather.

Lots of people (including, today, the New York Times) have gone to town on U.N. Ambassador-designate John Bolton’s rich record of extremist foreign policy views. I did the same myself yesterday. But of all the stuff he needs to be held accountable for in his confirmation hearings, the really important thing is the job he has been primarily responsible for at the State Department over the last four years. It just happens to be the single most important national security issue of all, according to no less a figure than Vice President Dick Cheney: avoiding nuclear terrorism.But as arms control chief at Foggy Bottom, Bolton is responsible for a set of policies that have left us unconscionably vulnerable. Who says so? Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, hardly a big-time partisan Democrat these days (disclosure: I was once on his staff). Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, didn’t mention Bolton’s name in remarks at the National Press Club today, but his indictment of how seriously this administration has taken the threat of nuclear terrorism is unmistakable:

In measuring the adequacy of our response to today’s nuclear threats, on a scale from one to ten, I would give us about a three, with the recent summit between Presidents Bush and Putin moving us closer to a four.American citizens have every reason to ask, “Are we doing all we can to prevent a nuclear attack?” The simple answer is, “no, we are not.”… Increasingly, we are being warned that an act of nuclear terrorism is inevitable. I am not willing to concede that point. But I do believe that unless we greatly elevate our effort and the speed of our response, we could face disaster…I am not sure we fully grasp the devastating, world-changing impact of a nuclear attack….I believe that preventing the spread and use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction should be the central organizing security principle for the 21st century. During the Cold War, we saw what it looks like when world leaders unite, when they listen to each other, when they cooperate against common threats. It is my hope that we will soon employ this model of international teamwork in responding to the threats from North Korea and Iran, in securing nuclear materials around the globe, and in confronting the danger of catastrophic terrorism anywhere in the world.

Fine advice for Bush, and an implicit rebuke to the policies supervised by Bolton. It’s bad enough that Republicans who are determined to bankrupt the public treasury are focused on cracking down on bankruptcy filings by regular citizens. To follow that up by sending Mr. It-Ain’t-Worth-Doing-If-We-Can’t-Do-It-Our-Way, John Bolton, to the U.N., is even worse, when it comes to deadly threats to our security that demand an effective international response.I’ll say it again: Bolton needs to load up a jumbo platter of crow, and start chowing down, or expect a potentially successful challenge to his confirmation.

If there was a truly bright spot for Democrats last November anywhere in red-state America, it was surely in Colorado (with Montana running a close second). Of all the Democratic candidates in close U.S. Senate races, Ken Salazar was the only winner. His brother, John, pulled off one of the few gains Democrats were able to make in U.S. House seats. And Democrats won control of both branches of the state legislature. Now they look poised to take back the governorship next year, and run the whole shooting match.With Democrats around the country looking to Colorado Democrats as role models, you’d think Chris Gates, the state party chair who oversaw this remarkable election day would be on an extended victory lap. But no: yesterday the state party’s executive committee ousted him as chair in favor of environmental activist Pat Waak (Gates is contesting the outcome based on a claim that certain proxy votes didn’t get counted).According to press reports, the coup against Gates was basically an act of revenge by “activists” unhappy with his less-than-secret support of Salazar in his Senate primary against fellow-activist Mike Miles. Presumably, Gates’ perfidious maneuvering, in tandem with virtually everybody in the national party who wanted to win a Senate seat, was responsible for Salazar’s photo-finish 73-27 win over Miles in the primary.I don’t live in Colorado, and thus don’t know if something else is going on, but it sure as hell looks like suicidal cannibalism of the highest order. And it poses a real challenge to those outside Colorado who keep insisting that the post-election activist insurgency in Democratic circles is “not about ideology, but about Democrats winning.” I know some people are unhappy with Salazar about his vote to confirm Gonzeles (which I disagreed with myself), but Jesus, folks, if the Democratic tent isn’t big enough for Ken Salazar–a guy recently touted by no less a fire-breather than David Sirota as a hero of “populist progressivism”–then we better get ready for permanent minority status.The Colorado Coup is especially bad news for new DNC chairman Howard Dean, who may now have to treat one of the most successful state party organizations in the country as yet another basket case. And it doesn’t much help that at least a few of his more vocal and visible supporters are touting the Coup as part of a “silent revolution” spurred by the Dean movement. I know Dean has other fish to fry right now, and is trying to keep a relatively low profile. But if he should happen to feel the need for a bit of a Sister Souljah moment to instill a sense of political reality in Activist World, this would be a really good occasion to indulge it.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey