But it hasn’t shown the Democrats in a positive light either.

Senator Reid, Senate majority leader, acquiesced to bigoted fears and came out in opposition to the Islamic community center in NYC.

President Obama gave a great speech upholding our most cherished constitutional principles in regards to the mosque, only to step back a bit.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi wants to investigate who’s funding the opposition to the mosque, an absurd reaction that brings up questions of limiting free speech and a waste of congressional time.

And the seeming silence from the party itself.

One party mongers fear and bigotry against their ostensively conservative principles and the other party cowers.

Sad to watch.

The Republican party, ostensively the ‘conservative’ one, abandoned conservative principals long ago.  Protestations to the contrary, the tea party activists are not conservative either. The turning point was the election of 2000 and it has descended since into a authoritarian, nativist party of reactionaries (and those pandering to them). Case in point:

“In my own mind, I have the same political philosophy I’ve always had–basically libertarian but tempered by Burkean small-C conservatism. But I am no longer a member of the Republican Party and no longer consider myself part of the “conservative movement.” That’s not because I changed, but because I believe that they have. The Republican Party of today is not the party of Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan that I was once a member of; it stands for nothing except the pursuit of power as an end in itself, with no concern whatsoever for what is right for the country. In a recent interview with The Economist magazine, I characterized the Republicans as the greedy, sociopathic party. I stand by that,” - Bruce Bartlett, economic adviser under Reagan and H.W. Bush.

via Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan has been on a roll with this, a earlier quote from him speaking of gay rights:

What maddens me about the right – what has driven me and so many into outright opposition – has been their refusal to acknowledge the conservative aspects of this movement, and the balls it took to take on the gay far left and identity politics in favor of civil integration in the polarized plague years. They saw a minority within a minority battling for responsibility and equality – and all they really saw were homos. With this minority, the GOP did first what it now does to so many. Instead of seeing many of us as allies, they pushed all of us into the enemy camp. Just as they will not concede the critical distinction between Muslims and Jihadists, or often fail in their rhetoric to acknowledge the great contributions of legal immigrants as opposed to illegal ones, so they pushed another minority away.

Their fears trumped their hopes; their bigotry trumped their humanity. With Muslims, Hispanics and gays, the GOP is about lumping us all together and demonizing and blaming us collectively for sins we did not commit and failures for which we are not responsible.

This is not conservatism, properly understood. It is fear.

Andrew Sullivan

The recent, and growing, protests by conservatives and Republicans against Islam in general, and the Mosque near ground zero specifically,  is a case in point. Instead of making a fair (and real) distinction between the >1 billion people of Islam and the insane murderers of Al Queda, as even Bush II was able to do, they’ve conflated the two to the extent they demonize all Muslims and anything Muslim.

Never mind the 1st amendment, you know the one that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” among other things, an Islamic community center 2 blocks from ‘ground zero’ drives modern Republican leaders into a froth of  anti-Muslim rhetoric, from denying the 1200 year old, 1+ billion strong religion the status of religion to Gingrich’s conflating terrorists with all muslims and calling it an insult,  to Sarah Palin’s usual incoherent ramblings.

Never mind that the community, including the Jewish and Christian leaders in the area and the mayor, were in support of it. Never mind that hundreds of thousands of New York City peaceful, America-loving residents are Muslim, Tea party republicans would see national/federal concerns trump the desires of the locality.

Never mind that there is already a mosque in the area, or that they own this former “Burlington Coat Factory” site. The tea party Republicans, the right from Newt Gingrich to Sarah Palin make a lie of  their protestations of ‘small government’ and adherence to constitutional principles. In fact, in this issue the right, the Republicans and the Tea party activists have only shown themselves to be the an even more authoritarian, nativist party than that under Bush II.

I have to say, I am a contradiction. I was an expert marksman in the Army, but I haven’t shot a weapon before or since or outside of duty. I don’t really care for guns much and I don’t own a gun, don’t plan to. Yet my sense of civil liberty (and all the reasons stated here) causes me to lean toward a strong defense of the right to own guns. As with all civil liberties there are instances of reasonable regulation (can’t shout fire in a theatre, can’t threaten the president with death, can’t discriminate in the public square in the name of religion), and there is with the 2nd amendment. I’ll agree with much of what is said here, we should be defending the 2nd amendment as vigorously as the others.

The GOP is now doing to Latinos what it did to gays. Its leaders – by backing the Federal Marriage Amendment in the last decade and now the Arizona law in this – are essentially saying that they do not understand how these measures could impact a minority’s collective psyche. Whatever the technical merits of either measure – and there were intellectually coherent (if, to my mind, unpersuasive) defenses of both – the lack of empathy or understanding is the real issue. It places the Republican “us” against the minority “them.” This is not just a failure of empathy; it is failure of judgment. The votes of Latinos will be massively important in the very near future, and the number of people who know and love gay people grows daily.

There’s more, read it:
The GOP vs Gays And Latinos – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

Normally, the point of driving is to get somewhere. The traffic laws enable us to get where we are going much more quickly and safely than we would if each of us had to decide for him- or herself which side of the street to drive on. The traffic laws do not tell us where to go. They leave the choice of destination, and for that matter the decision whether to drive at all, entirely up to us. They simply tell us which side of the road to drive on, that we should stop at various points, and so forth. By taking away our freedom to drive on the left, or to blast through busy intersections, they grant us much more freedom in the form of a greatly enhanced ability to get wherever we want to go quickly and safely.

Anyone who thinks that the traffic laws enhance our freedom should acknowledge that in some cases, including this one, government action can enhance our freedom, even if that action takes the form of restrictions on what we can and cannot do. An enormous number of questions about which (other) forms of government action might enhance our freedom would remain to be answered, but the fact that some government policy involves either a more active government or new restrictions on our action would not, by itself, imply that it diminishes our freedom.

Of course the problem then becomes, how do we measure personal liberty? If our goal it to increase the total freedom and liberty of all individuals, what restrictions will do that and which ones will not. That’s the basis of a lot of arguments and debates.

If we can agree, and I think most sane American Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and others do, that individual liberty is a paramount goal of government, then we can have civil (if vehement) disagreement as how that is to be accomplished. I usually have an optimistic outlook that civil and even sometime heated  debate and discussion, by those in power and those in opposition can lead to legislation that increases to totality of individual liberty. Unfortunately, I have not seen that in the last 10 years. I lay that problem squarely in the lap of Bush-Rove-Cheney and the Republican party who spent the first 8 years of this decade not only demolishing the whole idea of personal liberty, but demonizing the opposition as unpatriotic and anti-American, or using gay men and women as scapegoats. Unfortunately, many in the Republican party even now shout communism, tyranny, socialism and fascism against all sane and reasoned consideration. It’s not particularly conducive to governing. This is not to say that Democrats and those on the left haven’t had their share of insanity. I’ve read some of the diaries on DailyKos, I’ve seen it. In fact, in 2004, I started myself to get a bit over the top.

I’d hope we could agree that our basic premise we share is the increase of individual liberty and respectfully disagree on some of the best ways to get there.

The population of Arizona is nearly 30% Latino, current trends will increase that percentage. Latinos in Arizona have traditionally been split between Republicans and Democrats. 40% of the Latino vote has traditionally gone Republican since many Latinos are socially conservative.

First, there was the near-passage of a law that requires future presidential candidates to produce birth certificates to get on the ballot (in an naked anti-Obama push) which struck many as near-racist (no such law was suggested before Obama) and lunatic fringe. That didn’t sit well with many Latinos, even Republican ones.

Then the climax, the Republican legislators in Arizona pass a law, and the Republican governor signs it, that requires individuals to produce ‘proof of citizenship’ if law enforcement ‘suspects’ they are illegal immigrants. This law would seem to be a slap in the face of traditional libertarian and Republican aversion to “National IDs,” and undue power of the government over individuals (really, “Your papers please?”). The Republican state passes a law that would seemingly be against traditional Republican and libertarian principles and the National Republicans are nearly silent and many supportive of that law. Of course the natural conclusion to this seeming contradiction of principles is because the law would not affect ‘white’ individuals, so it’s all right?

That at least seems to be the Latino reaction (and frankly, I can see little other explanation), because the polls are suggesting that already the Latino voters in Arizona are starting to leave the Republican party in droves. Just as Prop 187 has contributed to the rapid decline of the Republican party in California, it seems that this law will now contribute to the rapid decline of the Republicans in Arizona.

And now today, the Arizona legislature passes a law banning ‘Ethnic Study” courses and programs. Though one might sympathize with the reason (treat people as individuals, not ‘groups’ is the stated reason), the purpose seems suspect given the current rash of laws.

Already, traditionally Republican hispanic populations like Cubans in Florida and others nationally are taking notice.

Three strikes and you are out.

Why Not Statehood For DC? – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

• In 1997 every “normal” married couple with two children that earned $24,000 or more (in today’s dollars) had to pay at least some income taxes.  The top nonpayer threshold for a family of this size was just under $24,000.  This means there were some four-person families with income just below $24,000 that owed no income taxes.
• In 1997 a Republican majority Congress and President Clinton enacted the Balanced Budget Act.  At the insistence of Congressional Republicans, this law created a $400-per-child tax credit which began in 1998.  This caused the top nonpayer threshold to jump more than $7,000, to about $31,300.  Millions of families with kids with incomes between $24,000 and $31,300 were “taken off the rolls” because the child tax credit wiped out the small income tax liability they owed.
• As a result of the 1997 law, in 1999 the child tax credit automatically increased to $500 per child, and the threshold for a married family with two kids grew to $32,800 in today’s dollars.

In 2001 President Bush and the Republican Congress enacted a major tax law that increased the child tax credit to $600.  This law also introduced the 10% income tax bracket, which lowered by 5 percentage points the lowest income tax rate.  The combination of these two tax changes raised the top nonpayer threshold to $38,700.  That law further phased in over time increases in the child credit to $1,000 per child.

The 2003 tax law enacted by President Bush and the Republican Congress accelerated the $1,000 per child amount to be effective immediately.  This increased the threshold to $47,400 in 2003.  That’s a huge jump.  It was incredibly popular, and it helped create political impetus for the 2003 law which also accelerated rate reductions and cut capital gains and dividend rates.

Of course the Democrats have had a hand in increasing this too (keep reading the article).

I’m afraid that most people, Republicans, Tea Party, Democrats and the like, would not go for a cut in this credit. It would be political suicide.

We need to cut spending, but that will not balance the budget (unless you want to cut defense and a few other huge expenses) so we need to change the tax code. I suspect that’s not going to happen.

Why do so many Americans pay no income taxes? | KeithHennessey.com.

When 98% of the country’s families got tax cuts, and taxes are the lowest they’ve been in 60 years, it makes one wonder about the origins of the protestations of ‘communist’ and ‘socialist.’

I have never smoked pot, unless you count inhaling the smoke from some a certain relative of mine threw into a campfire once.  I never plan to smoke or ingest it. You can put me on the ‘social conservative’ end of the spectrum when it comes to personal habits. I don’t smoke tobacco, rarely if ever drink alcohol or coffee even and have never taken non-prescription drugs (ok, so there was that time when I was 16 and drank some Jimson weed tea, which was really stupid). So I don’t have a horse in this race.

Yet on a policy side, I tend towards libertarian on this issue. Marijuana is relatively harmless when compared to two other legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco (though in comparison to eating vegetables, it’s not particularly benign either) and the enforcement of the anti-marijuana laws cause more problems than ever would be caused by legal use. I say, allow individuals to make the choice to use it or now, redirect resources to enforcement of laws against more egregious crimes, and perhaps save and make some revenue.