#ChuckColson dead; grannies safer; prisoners still exploited

In case you've not heard, Charles Colson (Wiki bio), one of the last remaining major players in the Watergate scandal, is dead at age 80.

The grannies part of the header, for those unfamiliar with Watergate days, refers to Colson's work for Richard Nixon on behalf of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (yes, actual acronym of CREEP) when he said he'd walk over his own grandmother to get Tricky Dick re-elected.

The prisoners comment is a riff on his Prison Fellowship, which, the story says, Colson created "to minister to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families. It runs work-release programs, marriage seminars and classes to help prisoners after they get out." It was his new lease on life, riffing on his pre-conviction conversion for a new career.

And, let's start there with a reality dose on Colson's alleged post-Watergate saintliness.

Per the Yahoo story up top, Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg said that Colson never really apologized for threatening to rough him up, just for his role in the burglary of Ellsberg's office. And, that wasn't the only roughing up Colson allegedly threatened to do, or had done, in service of CREEP.

But, he's got more to answer to as long-term head of Prison Fellowship.

First, here in Texas, he served as a "front" for then-Gov. George W. Bush to make overstated, even directly untruthful claims about the power of faith-based groups, not only in prison rehabilitation, but outside the walls. (Unfortunately, our current president, Dear Leader, Barack Obama, has actually expanded Bush's faith-based ministries presidential program. I'm surprised tea partiers haven't said that's part of his secret Muslim plan of U.S. control.)

Second, he got plugged in to The Family, the semi-secret inside-DC Christian prayer/activist group.

Third, he supported, in a letter he and other evangelical leaders sent to Bush, a just-war rationale for invading Iraq.

But, let's get back to those prisoners. First, on the faith-based programs issue, besides not always looking at their success rate, Colson ignored issues of constitutionality, even though one federal court had already, by the time he fronted for Bush, ruled that forced attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings was a First Amendment violation (thereby also, in essence, finding that AA was religious).

And, that's despite a 1987 quote, per his Time obit, that says differently:

Colson argues that each institution has a distinct, God-given role. Churches should emphasize spirituality and avoid the corrupting enticements of political power. Similarly, he opposes government- organized school prayers, insisting that “propagating moral vision” should be the job of the church, not the state.

Hmmm... seems to have ignored that, in reality.

But, let's not stop there.

If Colson REALLY cared about prisoners, then why did he never pair the power of his organization with Project Innocence? Riffing on that, why did he never try to persuade political and religious conservatives to face up to the issue of wrongful incarcerations?

For that matter, why didn't he address the socioeconomic reasons behind spiking incarceration rates? That would be the ever-rising incarceration rates that started rising a lot more rapidly about the time he got out of prison, as shown in the graphic, and about the time the income gap in America started widening again, in part due to the political conservativism he believed in. (And, no, it's not all due to population increases; by now, all baby boomers, AND, the kids of older baby boomers, have all "aged out"  of prime criminality ages.)

Why didn't he ever speak about the capitalistic, slavery-like part of the drive behind this, the push for ever more prison privatization, led by the privatizing companies like Wackenhut and Corrections Corporation of America? If he wanted to help those who were incarcerated live new lives after they got out, why didn't he address ongoing cuts in rehabilitation programs, especially at the private prisons? Ditto on his not addressing guard abuse, again, generally worse at private prisons.

And, that said, how much could a man who graduated an Ivy League school, who might be called an Eastern elitist by today's tea partiers (or by Spiro Agnew back then), who served seven months in a white-collar prison, really understand what he was dealing with?

For that matter, did Prison Fellowship cherry-pick the inmates with which it worked? I don't know, but it's possible; if anybody has any information about that, leave a comment.

No, Chuck Colson may have helped prisoners, but it was within a conservative agenda. The agenda was still running the show.

So, yes, before the hagiography machine runs too quickly, let's step back to reality.

#OrrinHatch vs #teaparty, round 1

So, Orrin Hatch has been forced into an official primary by Dan Liljenquist after failing to get 60 percent in Utah's GOP caucus.

But, can tea partiers really beat Hatch like they did Bob Bennett two years ago? I doubt it.

Hatch will continue to bring up not just his potential chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, but, despite how conservative Utah votes, how much bacon he has brought home the past three decades. And, despite tea partiers' claims to stand for small government, I suspect a fair number of them support it even more for states other than their own.

Remember, even Ron Paul has pulled this one, in defending the pork he's brought home to his Congressional district. And, unless Liljenquist gets more outside money than he has so far from Freedom Works, Hatch will have no problem carpet-bombing the airwaves. But, other than raising the "outside funding" angle, which could shoot himself in the foot, will he try to portray Liljenquist as too radically conservative in a state as conservative as Utah?

And, this isn't just about Utah. Should Liljenquist get the nod, Dems could consider putting some national money in this race, to force the GOP to defend a must-win seat AND in the hopes of getting Liljenquist to make a radical comment or two for national ad campaign airplay.

Stay tuned.

I was right ... but Berkman and the #Stlcards aren't

About 14 months ago, when the St. Louis Cardinals picked up longtime Houston Astro first baseman/outfielder Lance Berkman from the free agency discard heap, I speculated that for Cards' GM John Mozeliak, this might just NOT be a one-year plan but rather, should Berkman rebound away from his brief failure in Yankee Stadium, with the added motivation of being in the same division as the Astros to prove them wrong, he could also be made into the "replacement" for The Machine, Albert Pujols.

And, of course, I was right, even though some other sports bloggers hinted at the time that I was thinking too conspiratorially.

However, Berkman isn't ... right. Not physically, we see, as the Cards have officially put him on the DL. Yahoo Fantasy's note (he's on my fantasy team) notes that calf injuries have varying healing times, so he could be out more than the two weeks of the 15-day DL. (The Cards, it's worthy of note, didn't backdate his day of placement, so they at least expect him to chew up two full weeks.)

Unfortunately, he's not the only Cardinal "not right." (And this one is also on my fantasy team.)

Adam Wainwright has been waning this year so far, to be sure. But he hasn't been right, or wright.

An ESPN stat said he's only about 1mph slower on the fastball than 2010, and that his WHIP isn't hugely different. It didn't say anything about batting average against him on balls in play, so I don't know if he's getting unlucky, or getting lead-footed fielding support.

And, I've not seen any video of him, so I don't know for sure what the problem might be ... but I'll venture a guess.

Lack of motion on the fastball, due to rust or whatever. Or maybe he's not "snapping" the curve so much. Or both.

That said, because Rafael Furcal is coming back to earth, David Freese is an injury waiting to happen until he plays a full season, and Chris Carpenter, once again, is an injury that couldn't wait to happen, if Waino can't bounce back and the Big Puma turns out to be an injury tamed pussycat, I'll stand by my preseason prediction that the Cards miss the playoffs.

The economy, gas prices, perceptions and elections

As I noted in a post a week ago, the second quarter of a president's fourth year in office is key to his (or her, perhaps, some future day) election chances.

Well, we have the early stories from March analysis, ending the first quarter. The New York Times is kind of gloomy about March, and about what this means for months ahead ,but not too much so.

Meanwhile, gas prices, which were supposed to be such a bugaboo a few weeks ago, are starting to fall again. One reason? Obama's not rattling so many sabers against Iran. Another, not mentioned in the story, is that many refineries have finished the annual conversion to producing summer-grade gasoline.

And, with the election ahead, and likely gambling that moderate as well as liberal Jewish voters will be his, Obama probably won't rattle those sabers very hard very often through at least the middle of the summer.

I stand by my guesstimate that the unemployment rate will be no higher than 8.2 percent, may well drift a tick lower to 8.1, and might possibly hit 8.0 percent, by the traditional Labor Day start of the stretch drive. So, don't believe tea party bullshit like this about "a coming conservative landslide." (Indeed, in one specific counterexample, I'll venture that Obama increases his 2008 margin in Virginia.)

But, the real biggie is that the Green Party boosts its national and Texas effort.

Anti-Green polling bias, it seems

What else can you say about a presidential poll launched by a putatively authoritative and unbiased group, Public Policy Polling, that includes Libertarian Party contender Gary Johnson, who is nowhere near guaranteed to get that nomination, but does NOT include Dr. Jill Stein, who is quite likely to get the Green Party nod?

Biased? Shortsighted? Pushing a "name" envelope, i.e., name dropping by other means? Making pre-judgments about poll-worthiness? A bit of all of the above?

Anyway, if anybody else sees other examples of this, drop me a comment!

#CFI is going to the Gnu Atheist dogs

So, John Shook of Center for Inquiry thinks humanists (and he doesn't even use the phrase "secular humanist") who are also atheists, metaphysically, need to self-identify with atheists to promote a "humanist agenda"? Really?

TOTALLY disagree with the main premise, expressed at the end. For those of us leery enough of Gnus to prefer the label “secular humanist,” we don’t WANT to advance an “atheist agenda.”

I know Shook talked about a "humanist agenda." But, given that he thinks humanists' best option for that is identifying with Gnus, I deliberately switched. I'm just taking his bait-and-switch plea to its logical conclusion.

Second, contra the larger tenor of his column, for Gnu Atheists, "atheist" is indeed becoming, or has become, a sociological word  first and a philosophical word second. That gets back to the "atheist agenda" issue. Shook himself adds to that by continually capitalizing "atheist" and "atheism" throughout the blog post.

Shook struck me as being halfway reasonable in the post-Paul Kurtz era at CFI. Maybe he still is, at least in light of what CFI in general is becoming.

With that thought, I'll say ... "I'm all Shook up."