According to the (subscription-only) Wall Street Journal today, the Bush administration quietly announced that the premiums Medicare beneficiaries pay for doctor’s visits and other outpatient care are expected to jump 12 percent next year. And that number could ultimately drift up towards the 17 percent increase that was imposed this year if Congress, as expected, boosts Medicare payments to physicians to keep them from abandoning the program. Administration officials are said to hope the impact of this premium spiral will be cushioned by the advent of the new Rx drug benefit next year. But there’s a catch, of course: most beneficiaries will have to pay additional premiums to get that coverage, which is itself pretty limited. Does the administration have a plan to deal with the growing Medicare crisis? Of course not. That would involve admitting the GOP didn’t “fix” Medicare two years ago, and might also distract attention from the administration’s relentless drive to gain acceptance for a “plan” that’s not really a plan, to deal with a Social Security “crisis” that’s not really a crisis. And these guys sure wouldn’t interrupt themselves from one mistake to admit another.

I have every intention of leaving the Schaivo tragedy alone for the foreseeable future, but there’s one more point that needs to be clearly understood in the wake of the Catholic Church’s tardy but emphatic embrace of the Schindler family’s fight to oppose the withdrawal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.As Manuel Roig-Franzia documented in an excellent backgrounder in yesterday’s Washington Post, the Vatican’s position on end-of-life issues has changed in important ways over the last few years, with the Schiavo case serving as a key catalyst in that shift. Here’s the key graph:

Before this case, before the pope’s statement, even conservatives such as [the U.S. Conference of Bishops’ Richard] Doerflinger say there was enough of a debate about the Catholic position that a person could choose which side to take: continue or discontinue tube-feeding. But now the pope and the cardinals have made much more definitive statements that Doerflinger and his polar opposites agree seem to require Catholics to continue with tube-feeding, as long as it “provides nourishment” and “alleviates suffering.”

Indeed, this new position arguably overrules centuries of theological precedent holding that withdrawal of food and water in “hopeless” cases, whether self-administered or decided upon by family members and medical personnel, represents a surrender to natural death, not suicide or homicide.While the Vatican claims its current stance is simply a refinement of traditional teaching to reflect technological developments, it’s hard to avoid concluding that what this is really about is an adjustment of end-of-life ethics to comport with the Church’s bright-line, hard-lne position on beginning-of-life ethics, i.e., abortion. If so, that shift parallels the same sudden interest in end-of-life issues being exhibited by conservative evangelical Protestants (who are themselves relatively recent converts to the anti-abortion cause).And that brings me to a broader issue of potentially momentous significance to American religious and political life: the ongoing reduction of theology among Christian conservatives of every stripe to ethical legalism. Check out Laurie Goodstein’s useful review of this conservative Christian convergence in last Friday’s New York Times.Many centuries of differences over scriptural interpretation, church structure, liturgy, and every branch of theology other than ethics are rapidly being subsumed in the service of an interdenominational obsession with reproductive, marital, and now, medical ethics. Nearly all of this convergance, moreover, has happened in the last few decades. It’s breathtaking.Now, conservative Christians would argue that this ethical tunnel-vision is a prophetic (or in the case of Catholics, pastoral) response to a secularized modern world that is losing its moral bearings in a way that is unprecedented since the Christianization of Europe under Constantine.This is, to put it mildly, a rather tough case to make when you consider the savage excesses of ostensibly Christian Europeans over the centuries, not to mention the belief of the early Reformers that Catholic Europe had become actively Satanic. But that’s where both the Vatican and its erstwhile critics seem to be headed. And that’s why some of us are worried that conservative Christianity, Catholic and Protestant alike, is being seized by a counter-secularization that confuses defense of traditional, worldly cultural values with fidelity to the Faith.To be sure, there remain a number of obstacles to a full-fledged conservative religio-political alliance in this country, including the Vatican’s increasingly vocal opposition to the death penalty, and to the idea that the United States can define “just wars” as it wishes. And there’s plenty of ferment in conservative Protestant circles as well, particularly in terms of the ethical demands of the New Testament, which are not terribly consistent with conservative political orthodoxy on subjects ranging from the environment to care for the poor.But for the moment, the Schiavo case looks like it may represent an historic highwater mark of the pan-Christian conservative movement, and all the Christian flock should take a good look at where its various shepherds are leading them.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey

This is hardly a surprise for us cynics, but suddenly, even as legislative action becomes the sole hope of the Schindler family in the Terri Schiavo case, their biggest supporter, Rep. Tom DeLay, seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. Sure, it’s Congress’ Easter Recess, but that was true last week as well when DeLay and Bill Frist called Congress back into “emergency session” to prevent what DeLay called “murder” and “medical terrorism.” Now that the whole thing hasn’t worked out too well from anybody’s point of view, DeLay seems to have decided it’s no emergency at all. Carl Hulse and Adam Nagourney explore this development, and the broader question of whether DeLay has made the mistake of his political life, in today’s New York Times.

I took a Good Friday break from blogging yesterday. Years ago, I heard a Catholic priest deliver a Good Friday sermon that began: “Today we commemorate the victory of absolute evil.” Since then, my practice has been to spend some time on Good Friday thinking about the nature of evil. No, not just the evil that we Christians believe was perpetrated on Jesus of Nazareth (a preoccupation newly adopted by many conservative evangelical Christians thanks to Mel Gibson), but more to the point, the evil that Christians have perpetrated in Jesus’ name, most notoriously on Good Friday, date of countless pogroms over the centuries. It’s the cruelest irony of all: Christians marking the Crucifixion of their Jewish Savior by (figuratively) building crosses and crucifying Jews.The Good Friday Pogrom is, so far as I know, a thing of the past, but at a time when blind self-righteousness, fear and hatred of The Other (whether it’s gays and lesbians, Muslims, or “pagan” liberals), and highly selective attention to Jesus’ teachings are again on the rise here among Christians in America, it’s probably a good time to remember the whole point of the Passion story, in which Jesus’ own disciples denied and betrayed Him.This, the evil done precisely by those speaking in Jesus’ name, was probably best expressed in Johann Heermann’s seventeenth-century hymn:Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended,that man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?By foes derided, by thine own rejected,O most afflicted.Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee:I crucified thee.

There’s been a simmering debate of late in op-ed pages and the blogosphere about the prepoderance of men in the political opinion biz. As an old white guy with no significant influence over who gets to say what in any venue, I figured there was no reason this side of masochism for weighing in, but as a final Lenten discipline, I’ll offer a few scattered thoughts.There are at least three separate issues being kicked around. One is the small number of women represented on the op-ed pages of Big Opinion Leading newspapers like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. A second is the male domination of influential but seletively read political magazines like The New Republic, The Nation, The Washington Monthly, etc. And the third is the decisively masculine cast of well-linked and well-supported political blogs.The first two issues, in reality, have to do with the ancient canons of the traditional journalism profession.Op-ed columns in all but the largest circulation newspapers have often served as the Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow for that hearty, underpaid tribe of political reporters. (I learned this personally when I tried to make a lateral transfer from government policy work into editorial writing, and was informed that giving me a job would screw up the entire career ladder). Thus, today’s columnists are yesterday’s ink-stained wretches, which means that the Editorial side of the business should eventually catch up with the growing gender balance of the News side.For the Big Papers, though, the problem is that there are so few editorial spots available, and, unlike their smaller competitors, no real market pressure to turn things over. I don’t want to name names, but in my judgment, nearly half of the columnists in the Big Papers, most of them white men, are just filling up space with Left-Right CW that could be, and for all I know, may be written by a computer.That’s why I think an aggressive affirmative action program for Big and Small Paper editorial staffs makes sense, so long as some care is taken to give some protection to those relatively few White Guys, regardless of seniority or connections, who have actually expressed an original thought now and then. It shouldn’t be that hard to find them. Perhaps we can have a Survivor-type contest.Political magazines are a different matter, partially because of ideological factors that complicate the usual “professional” issues about bylines. But as Katha Pollit of The Nation points out, some magazines have selection criteria that tend to discriminate against women. Of course, one magazine she fingers, The New Republic, has a reputation for discrimimating against anybody who didn’t get an Ivy League education (which doesn’t keep Un-Ivied me from reading every line). And many magazines discriminate against writers who doesn’t tow the party line, which gives the white guys who’ve been towing this or that party line since adolescence yet another advantage. The only quick way I can imagine to loosen up the magazines is to encourage them to keep losing money, which might in turn encourage them to diversify their voices, in many cases by tapping the more diverse voices they already feature in online editions.And then, ah yes, there’s the blogosphere, where the gender bias can’t exactly be blamed on Old Guys like me, since the median age of notable bloggers is about 25. And here there is a chicken-and-egg dilemma, since the demographic of inveterate blog readers seems to echo the smart-ass-white-boy demographic of blog writers.But the good thing about blogs is that for all the complaining about sponsors and back-scratching links and mainstream infestation, any woman can get out there and compete, and the recent effort to get more notice for female bloggers is an example of healthy market-based initiative.Personally, I’m paralyzed by ignorance and inertia from providing blogroll links to much of anybody I didn’t know about when I started this thing last fall. If that means I’m paying less attention to wo-bloggers than I should it’s certainly not a matter of bias; I’ve long considered myself a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. So I’m more than happy to discover and link to women who share my general point of view, and/or have something distinctive to say.In the end, the best way for women to get their fair share of the bloviating biz is for us all to push for a meritocracy that elevates talent and a distinctive voice over “representantive” versions of the same old Left-Right CV. And unfairly but inevitably, women will earn those prized high-profile journalistic gigs by performing at a level that makes bias or tokenism or role-playing irrelevant. It will require, in the words of Lucinda Williams, “real live bloody fingers and broken guitar strings.”UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey

It is clearer every day that the politico-legal furor over the sad case of Terri Schiavo has already drifted over the line from a question of law and fact, to one of religiously determined definitions of life and death, and of homicide and suicide.Initially, the case being made by congressional Republicans, the White House, and many supporters of the Schindler family was that the Schindlers simply needed a new judicial review of the case in a sympathetic court–i.e., a court not bound by seven years of Florida rulings. And the subsidiary arguments had to do with matters of fact: Was Michael Schiavo correct in saying his wife had made clear her opposition to living on in anything like her current condition? And did the medical officials in Florida who repeatedly diagnosed Terri Schiavo as being in a “persistant vegetative state” somehow get it fundamentally wrong?But as the legal case for the Schindlers fades with each adverse judicial ruling, and absent any real evidence of medical error (unless you believe the diagnosis made by Bill Frist, M.D. from a videotape of Terri Schiavo has any real standing), what remains is essentially a religious case. And that case has merged with the extra-constitutional claims of the more militant elements of the Right to Life movement, which have become conspicuously involved with the Schindlers.In the hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Whittemore that was forced by Congress, the Schindlers’ attorney relied heavily on the argument that Terri Schindler could not have conscienctiously given consent to the withdrawal of her feeding tube because it was contrary to Catholic teaching; indeed, it would have put her immmortal soul in peril of damnation, he suggested! In other words, since the act itself is abhorrent, she couldn’t consent to “suicide” any more than she could give her husband the right to “murder” her.This line of reasoning, of course, was fully anticipated by the prime enabler of the current crisis, Tom DeLay, who has consistently referred to the course of action dictated by Florida law and pursued in many thousands of cases around the country as “murder,” “barbarism,” and “medical terrorism.”So for the Schindlers’ backers, including Tom DeLay, the object here is not about law or fact, or for that matter, about Terri Schiavo–it’s about finding some way to fundamentally change the laws of Florida and the United States to accord with a particular religious view of the ethics of the end of life.Best I can tell, the Catholic teaching that withdrawal of nutrition from a brain-dead person represents “euthanasia” is relatively new, laid out in 1995 in the papal encyclical “Evangelium Vitae.”As explained by Father Thomas Williams, dean of theology at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome, the encyclical draws a very sharp distinction between “an action or omission which of itself and by intention causes death, with the purpose of eliminating all suffering,” which is murder, and the “decision to forgo so-called ‘aggressive medical treatment,’ in other words, medical procedures which no longer correspond to the real situation of the patient, either because they are by now disproportionate to any expected results or because they impose an excessive burden on the patient and his family.” The latter decision is morally fine, even upright. “That distinction is subtle but extremely important from a moral perspective,” said Fr. Williams.I think we would all agree the distinction is subtle, much like the Vatican’s long-standing distinction between “natural” and “artificial” contraception, or its distinction between “contraception” and “abortion” with respect to birth control methods that interfere with the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall. American Catholics have largely ignored these “subtle” but “extremely important” distinctions in the area of reproductive ethics, and if the public opinion surveys about the Schiavo case are any indication, they will probably ignore this one as well. Which is why, in the end, the Schindlers and their crusade is ultimately becoming just another battle in the right-to-life movement’s long war to force a redefinition of life and the legal protections afforded it from the moment of conception to biological death.We all need to understand this this is what the case is really about, and (a) ignore the legal and factual arguments being thrown out as tactical maneuvers by the anti-abortion activists and Republican politicians pursuing this issue, because they don’t mean them for a moment, and (b) recognize that for most of the protestors marching in support of the Schindlers, the photos of poor Terri Schiavo (may she someday rest in peace) they wave are just this week’s version of the fetus posters they brandish every day of the year.ADDENDUM: Before anyone emails me to accuse me of anti-Catholicism or something, I want it on record that I am about as philo-Catholic as any Protestant you will ever meet. And I completely respect (but do not share) the views of right-to-lifers, especially those, including most recently the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, who make a point of opposing capital punishment on the same grounds, and express greater concern than today’s Republicans for the health and prosperity of the sick and the poor. My plea in this post is simply for honesty, especially among those politicians who want to exploit the Schiavo case without embracing the logic of where it is inevitably leading.

If there’s one thing you can find at least tentative agreement on across the spectrum of Democratic opinion these days, it’s that the Donkey needs to squarely represent “reform” at a time when the GOP controls, and continues to abuse, total power in Washington. But sometimes it’s hard to shake the old belief that election reform, redistricting reform, budget reform, tax reform, campaign finance reform, etc., are at bottom “goo goo” process issues that are too boring to provide much fodder for real political action.The new issue of Blueprint magazine has an article by a Democratic pol who now wishes he had used a “reform” mantra to counter the very simple message of the GOP last November. Former U.S. Rep. Brad Carson, who lost a once-promising Senate race last year to wingnut Republican Tom Coburn, lays it all out, and it’s worth a careful read.

In one of the two big off-year political contests that will eventually transfix political junkies everywhere, GOP Attorney General Jerry Kilgore has formally launched his candidacy for governorship of the Commonwealth of Virginia, stumping around the state with an unlikely ally in tow: United States Senator John Warner, who has pretty much parted company with the gubernatorial candidate on the major issues facing Virginia in recent years.The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Jeff Schapiro referred to the Warner-Kilgore road show as a “Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis act,” a cultural reference that’s funny and apposite to us old folks who remember, however dimly, the 1950s show-biz partnership between the debonair Martin and the clownish Lewis (not then known, even in France, as a genius).”That Warner and Kilgore are coming together is evidence that the Republican Party is still coming apart, divided between the fading moderate bloc embodied by Warner and the dominant right wing that birthed Kilgore,” Schapiro wrote.The GOP unity signs in Virginia are very deceptive. Schapirto put it well:”How does [Kilgore] simultaneously satisfy the anti-taxers who control the GOP and also the Main Street-type Republicans, like Senator Warner, who will support a tax increase as an investment in essential services?”The no-new-tax forces, notably the Grover G. Norquist-led Americans for Tax Reform, are furious that Kilgore has pledged to support for renomination House and Senate Republicans who backed additional taxes for education, human services and public safety.”And moderate Republicans worry that the state’s finances will bleed again if Kilgore has his way on transportation. He wants to divert sales and income tax revenue that finances schools, police and programs for the poor to roads, rather than rely on higher fuel taxes and other fees on motorists.”So far as I know, Virginia Democrats are completely united behind the candidacy of Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine. But Kilgore, aside from the challenge of uniting his own partisans, is having to deal with an independent candidacy from Republican state senator Russell Potts of Winchester.Everything I know about Jerry Kilgore suggests to me that he’s not exactly the kind of deft politician who can herd sheep, much less cats. And indeed, the most common definition of the original Scotch-Irish meaning of the surname I share with him is: “Tender of goats.” That’s a pretty good description of the Attorney General’s leadership position in the Virginia GOP.

Sorry for the absence of posts this weekend, but I’m guest-blogging for Josh Marshall on his mammoth Talkingpointsmemo.com site. Given the snail-like speed of my internet connection down in Amherst, Virginia, it’s really hard to multi-task, much less multi-blog. We definitely need another four years of Democratic governance in Virginia to bring us high-speed internet access in rural communities in the Commonwealth, or our down-home wisdom will continue to be transmitted in spoons, not buckets. And that would be a cryin’ shame.

We’ve all been reminded in recent weeks that George W. Bush’s domestic agenda is as dangerous and irresponsible as ever. But Democrats often forget to point out that skewed tax cuts, ever-escalating debts, dependence on oil, indifference to homeland security needs, and indeed, Karl Rove’s divisive political strategy of polarization, all undermine America’s national security posture. For a comprehensive take on the Democratic opportunity to put “security first,” check out today’s New Dem Dispatch.