Ruth Ann's Prayer

Let me start off by saying that I like Ruth Ann Dailey. She's a very nice person, very smart, good writer and when she writes about music she's almost always gets it right.

But when she writes about graduation prayers, as she did this week, she gets it wrong. She shaded her arguments just enough them to qualify as a "straw man" argument.

Here's what she did. Her opening paragraphs:

Here's how the annual American fight over public school prayer played out this year:

In late May an agnostic family in a suburb of San Antonio, Texas, sued to remove the invocation and benediction from Medina Valley High School's graduation ceremony. Their lawsuit, filed with the help of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, claimed the prayers would force their son to participate in religious activities.

Last Tuesday, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in their favor, saying that formal prayers would make it seem that the school was "sponsoring a religion."

On Wednesday the state attorney general asked a federal appeals court to overturn the decision.

On Thursday the school's valedictorian filed a lawsuit, with the help of the pro-faith and limited-government Liberty Institute, to reinstate and lead the ceremonial prayers.

On Friday the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in and reversed the lower court's ban on prayer.

Ooo. She was sooo close! But the lower court did not issue a "ban on prayer." And the higher court did not "reverse" it, either.

Here's the lower court's ruling. The issue here is not prayer but official prayer. The ruling took out the words "Benediction" and "Invocation" from the program. It also instructed the students chosen to give what would have been them to be "statements of their own beliefs" rather than instructing those assembled in prayer.

That agnostic family was challenging the idea that they'd be told to pray at that graduation. The students giving speeches were free (as they always are) "to state their own personal beliefs" during the ceremony. They could give the sign of the cross, for example. Or kneel to Mecca, if they wished.

They just couldn't tell the crowd to pray.

And the upper court's ruling didn't reverse the lower court as much as dissolve its temporary restraining order and and preliminary injunction remand it to district court for further proceedings.

The upper court noted that "Benediction" and "Invocation" were removed from the program.

Now compare that to the prayer that takes up the rest of her column. She introduces it with:

Since the issue is likely to flare up again next year and to feature immaturity all the way around, here's an all-purpose speech for the prayer-minded class leader. It can be easily adapted to suit whatever the last court ruling might be.

And ends it with:

Despite the acrimonious lawsuit that preceded today's event, if I were allowed to offer a prayer, I would echo Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address -- 'With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds ...'

"Or we could stop wounding one another and just grow up. That would be my prayer today, if I were allowed to pray.

But the students in Medina Texas were allowed to pray.

They just shouldn't be allowed to force anyone else to pray.

And that's where Ruth Ann gets it wrong.

Sorry Ruth Ann, But You're Wrong. Again.

From Ruth Ann Dailey's column this week:

It's been perfectly clear for about three years now that questions about Mr. Obama's nationality have no traction. Whether he is a native-born American or has a valid birth certificate or (most recently, thanks to Mr. Trump) was born at a particular hospital -- reasonable people have long since felt the matter settled.

The only ones being hurt by the regular roiling of these waters are those who oppose Mr. Obama on a higher plane -- namely, the majority of Republicans and independents who do not dwell on the lunatic fringe.

While it's true that reasonable people have long felt the matter settled, what about, you know, Republicans?

In a recent poll by Public Policy Polling of 416 Republican primary voters in Iowa, when asked "Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States?" 48% said no. 26% were unsure. That's 74% who have not settled the matter, Ruth Ann.

But maybe that's just one state. What does it look like nationwide?

In another recent poll by PPP, 400 Republican primary voters were asked, "Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States? 51% said no and 21% were not sure. That's 72% who haven't settled the matter either, Ruth Ann.

Maybe it's the Polling company. So let's look around a little.

Last August in a CNN/Opinion Research poll, when asked, "Do you think Barack Obama was definitely born in the United States, probably born in the United States, probably born in another country, or definitely born in another country? 44% of the Republicans got it wrong. 27% said he was "probably born in another country" while 14% said he was "definitely born in another country" and 3% had no opinion.

That's 44% of polled Republicans who haven't settled the matter, Ruth Ann. Or at least they hadn't settled it in August of 2010.

Does this mean that Ruth Ann Dailey thinks that nearly half of the GOP isn't reasonable?

UPDATE - Straightened out the grammar of that last sentence.

Ruth Ann Dailey Spins - Badly

In an attempt to find some sort of right-left equivalence regarding the tone of our current political climate, the P-G's Ruth Ann Dailey proves, yet again, that while she certainly knows how to write, her ability see to the truth from the fog of her politics is always in question.

Her opening:

Given their scurrilous, insupportable yet sustained accusations against Sarah Palin, tea party activists and other non-Democrats after the Arizona mass shooting, it would seem that Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, Clarence Dupnik and other left-wingers have created a "climate of hate" and are thus responsible for Eric Fuller's violent threats and arrest on Saturday.

She then points out:

After all, within hours of the Jan. 8 shooting, Messrs. Krugman, Olbermann and Dupnik et al. had publicly pinned the mass murders on the right wing, the tea party and conservative media figures. And throughout the week, despite growing evidence to the contrary, these irresponsible provocateurs and their supporters refused to retract their slander.

So when Mr. Fuller, a member of their ideological throng, threatened one of those supposed culprits with death, it was cause and effect, right?

Let's take a look at what Krugman, Olbermann and Dupnik had to say. From Krugman's "Climate of Hate" column:

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

And then he illustrates something Dailey probably wants us to miss:

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

And then:

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

No equivalence. But perhaps that's part of Dailey's issue - that the left is hypocritically accusing the right of violent political rhetoric. And that's the root of the left's immorality here.

But then there's Olbermann's comment, where he ends the piece with this:

Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are Americans.

Something Dailey left out.

To be true, Olbermann does point out some of the violence/threats of violence coming from the right. For example:

If Sharron Angle, who spoke of "Second Amendment solutions," does not repudiate that remark and urge her supporters to think anew of the terrible reality of what her words implied, she must be repudiated by her supporters in Nevada.

If the Tea Party leaders who took out of context a Jefferson quote about blood and tyranny and the tree of liberty do not understand - do not understand tonight, now what that really means, and these leaders do not tell their followers to abhor violence and all threat of violence, then those Tea Party leaders must be repudiated by the Republican Party.

Or the Tigris and Euphrates of the Fox "News" political rhetoric:

If Glenn Beck, who obsesses nearly as strangely as Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore, and Bill O'Reilly, who blithely repeated "Tiller the Killer" until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers, do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death-fantasies and the dreams of bloodlust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution, then those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers, and by all politicians, and by sponsors, and by the networks that employ them.

As far as I know, none of those things have happened yet.

The violent rhetoric is there - by far more so on the right. This is the politics of "if ballots don't work, bullets will." And it's a tea party thing. Something else Dailey doesn't want you to think.

Anyway, the big point that she missed, is that Fuller (the nexus of this column) was only threatening violence. He didn't pick up a Glock with 30 bullets in it and spray a tea party crowd with death. It was a threat - a stupid threat, to be sure, but a serious threat nonetheless.

And he was arrested for it.

Will we see an arrest for the next tea partier that gushes on about the tree of liberty being sprinkled with the blood if tyrants?

Ruth Ann, Read Carefully

Take a look at today's column from P-G columnist Ruth Ann Dailey. The title of the column gives hint to what's inside:

Bad apples vs. good eggs: the power of one

The column posits an eternal struggle between the few bad apples, "the one person who..." and the greater community ("the good eggs") that has to fix the damage that bad apple caused.

She starts with an anecdote about jury duty and how the day was upended "all because one idiot phoned in a false threat."

Here's the core of her piece - it follows immediately:

It only takes one. One person, one moment, one stupid decision. It only takes one to mess things up for dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of other people.

She reiterates the point later on:

A relative handful of no-goodniks regularly screw up life for everyone else, and an unwritten law of the universe seems to be that the efforts of many are required to counteract each lone destructive act.

NOW look at her examples of "one person" whose actions messed things up for lots others:

We are near the end of a decade shattered by the violence that can be wrought, in modern times, by just one man willing to blow himself up for a cause.

One man - a suicide bomber. Obviously bad. She says a paragraph or so down the page:

We were there [in jury duty] because, in each criminal case, one person was charged with hurting another, acting in violation of laws written to protect all of us.

Another singular person - an accused criminal. Society has to correct itself for the misbehavior of that one person violating the rest of us.

Ruth Ann talks to a woman while waiting for jury duty:

But where she lives, decades of successful revitalization are beginning to crumble under the onslaught of drunken revelers.

Thousands live in her community and many thousands more pass through every day, bringing the benefits of commerce. But listening to a street brawl each weekend or stepping out the front door into someone's vomit once a month has longtime residents beginning to flee to quieter corners of the city.

The point is clear. There's that one person (or small group of people) who screws things up for the rest of us and then there's us.

So what should we make of this paragraph dropped in the middle of the compositional fabric of her column?

We were summoned to serve just six days after a historical election, a midcourse correction for an administration swept into power because of the charismatic promise of one man.

Guess Who? It's Obama!

Ruth Ann places The President of The United States among the lone terrorists, lone criminals, the lone vomiters on innocent people's doorsteps, to show how such no-goodniks need to be corrected by "We the people."

She even brings another president in to make her point:

Just as George Washington refused to be made king, our founders were wary enough of human inclinations that they designed a system of government to check the power of any individual.

Washington probably wouldn't look too fondly on Washington, D.C.'s unvetted czars. He and his peers probably would've been pretty skeptical that any one person could stop the rise of the oceans or cause the planet to heal, either, but here's a notion they'd endorse: We are the ones we've been waiting for. We the people.

And you thought the column was about jury duty and the value of civic involvement when it in fact it's all about how bad Obama is. And how good "we" were to stop him.

Subtle, Ruth Ann. Very subtle.

UPDATE: I forgot to link to Dailey's column. It's been corrected.