The Weekly Screed

The Supremes Strike Out

Hello again...

I figure three recent supreme court decisions are all we need to see where this country is headed:

Stike One - The Medicinal Marijuana Decision: growing pot in your own back yard for your own consumption is an act of interstate commerce -- and the States Have No Rights.

Strike Two: - The Eminent Domain Decision: Hey Mr. Working Man, that's a nice beach front property you've struggled all your life to keep in the family. Mind moving? We need it for a fancy office park -- and Individuals Have No Rights (and I'm on the same side as Clarence Thomas not once... but twice!? Jeez, when did the fabric of the Universe tear?).

Strike Three: Ten Commandments Decision(s): "I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have no other Gods before me." Now y'all bow down and kiss Charlton Heston's gentile-plays-Jewish ass.

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On a brighter note (?), I'm passing on along this link to a recent New York Times Op Ed piece in which former Lyndon Johnson aide Jack Valenti tells of how things were back when "bi-partisan" really meant something -- when the majority got most of it wanted, and the minority got some of what it wanted. Very different from today's motif, when the majority thinks it's entitled to everything and minority gets bupkus.

Who'da thunk we Baby Boomers would ever look back on the Lyndon Johnson years as "The Good Old Days" ?

OPINION | June 24, 2005
The Best of Enemies
By JACK VALENTI
Scenes from the era of bipartisanship.

Any way... you know that drill... that's my opinion, and it should be yours, too...

--PS

Democrats And Religion

The Weekly What??? From Who?

Yeah, it's me again...

I ran across an item in last Sunday's local paper that has been festering in my mind ever since, and this morning I decided I could not let it lie:

Lawyer Tuke is Democrats' new chairman

By NATALIA MIELCZAREK
Staff Writer

Nashville attorney Bob Tuke, elected yesterday as the new chairman of the state Democratic Party, said he plans to engage Tennesseans in discussions about morality, religious values and ethics in government.

"We as Democrats no longer are going to shy away from expressing our point of view in moral and even religious terms," Tuke said in a telephone interview a few hours after being elected without opposition. "This country, this state belongs to all of us. No one political party has the right to claim hold on religious values, patriotic values or values of any kind."

( click here for the whole story)

Well, I don't know about you, but I found something really disturbing in that story, it's been bothering me ever since I read it, and this morning I finally had to get back on my soapbox.  I have
composed the following Letter to the Editor of the Tennessean, which I am sharing with you all here in the (likely?) event it is not published:

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To the Editor:

While I congratulate Bob Tuke on his recent ascension to the chairmanship of the Tennessee Democratic Party I find it truly disturbing to learn of his commitment to "discussions about... religious values... in government" (Tennessean, Sunday June 19, pg 2B).

It seems to me that the Republicans have engaged in enough discussion of religious values in government for both parties.  Nationally, the Republicans have given us a President who claims to operate with the authority of a "higher Father.”  In Tennessee, Republicans have given us a Senator who panders to religious fundamentalists in his nascent quest to be that president's successor. What we do not need now is a Democratic Party that veers off on the same unenlightened course.

Has the Democratic Party come so far adrift from its core political values that it must now take up the banner of religious values in order influence the electorate? 

Rather than a Democratic Party that tries to beat the "holier than thou" Republicans at their own game, what we need now is a Party that can reassert the voice of — yes, secular — reason into our increasingly strident, religiously-skewed public dialog. 

If these modern-day heirs to the party of Thomas Jefferson will not protect and defend the Constitution's clear intent to keep the very private matter of religion out of the very public arena of government, then who will?  What political force is going to counteract the increasingly frightening march toward a theocratic America?

Not, apparently, the Tennessee Democratic Party.

Paul Schatzkin
[email protected]

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So, that's my opinion, and it should be yours, too. 

And no, this does not mean that "I'm back."  It just means I never really left.

--PS