GEORGE ARCHIBALD

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

The bishop of Reading, England, has called on Anglicans to send less Christmas cards this year. My friend, Father Frank Julian Gelli in London, who was the late Lady Diana’s pastor and spiritual adviser, sent me the bishop’s message.

That note from the bishop of Reading also came over to the Episcopal Church USA and its many parishes affiliated with the worldwide Protestant church headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but I did not yet get the message from Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Middleburg, Virginia, which is in disarray with an interim rector, the Reverend C. Anne Hallmark who has defied church precedence and announced her intention to stay as permanent rector.

The Emmanuel Church vestry has gone along and apparently suspended its search for a permanent rector. So I don’t know where we’re going.

I know nothing about Anne Hallmark, except a brief meeting where she did not respond positively to my openness about my favorite books of the Bible and my offer to volunteer my services for the poor and outreach that my mother performed for many years. Hallmark did not invite me to attend church services, offer me any spiritual advice or counseling as a member of the church since age 12, and later as a choir member and acolyte until I went away to college and the military.

Hallmark basically blew me off. She’s apparently got her own agenda, so I get the message: You’re not wanted. The ecumenical, spiritual, and brotherly-love torch at Emmanuel Church in Middleburg, Virginia, that I have known with four permanent rectors since 1956 has apparently been extinguished by our first woman rector.

It’s a sad result of mine and my mother’s devotion to the church over more than a half century. But times have changed and I know when I’m not welcome, blown off, told in so many words to go elsewhere to church. So I shall.

It’s hard, because I was a choirboy and acolyte at Emmanuel Church before Anne Hallmark was born, and joined with former rector Earnest A. “Froggie” DeBordenave -- against my father’s wishes but with my mother’s approval -- in sit-ins in Middleburg in 1961 that got rid of segregation of our local restaurants and the state of Virginia’s “massive resistance” against allowing blacks to enjoy the same public facilities as whites in that era.

My mother, Rusty Archibald led the altar guild at Emmanuel Church in Middleburg for 30-plus years, drove people all over the place for medical appointments as part of the Fish network, and volunteered several days a week at the local food bank operated by the Middleburg United Methodist Church.

I don’t much like getting the bum’s boot from Emmanuel Church by Hallmark. I’ll show up there for church services when I want, as a 50-year attendee.

Otherwise, I’ve been invited to join the Middleburg Baptist Church, so I’ll go there. And I have Catholic friends who attend Saint Stephen’s Church in Middleburg, land bought by President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who scouted the spot on horseback and organized the deal to purchase the spot for the church with property owners Sam Fred and John Pettibone.

So I’m not worried about where I’ll be welcomed to go to church.

My Church of England priest friend, Father Frank Julian Gelli, who was pastor and spiritual adviser to Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, until her death, says the bishop’s “miracle recipe to tackle the crisis is that you send fewer Xmas cards to people you ‘do not really like’ Instead, you should just put up your feet and relax. Oh, yes, he also opines you should give fewer presents but hand out jars of marmalade or pickled onions instead.”

That will fit in with our current economic situation. I buy my Christmas presents throughout the year, so my daughters will get a variety of books and CD’s they will like, but at Christmas this year I especially wonder where we are going as a country and a culture.

Father Frank courageously called the bishop of Reading’s notice about Christmas cards “dull … boring … utterly feeble … feckless … asinine … grumpy.”

I believe that says it very well.

Father Frank further tore apart the direction of the Anglican Church in England –- and by rote the Episcopal Church USA –- as follows:

“Expecting meaningful leadership from [Church of England] bishops is like trusting Gordon Brown to fix the current economic and financial crisis. I mean, the PM is the man largely responsible for the mess we are in. Did he not run the British economy for ten years? It would be like appointing a burglar chief of police.

“Similarly, Anglican panjandrums must take responsibility for the spiritual waste they have helped to create in this country. Many people in the audience spoke as if Jesus Christ meant to them as little as Zarathustra or Bodhidharma. And yet you have a national church, ‘by law established,’ whose supreme governor and ‘defender of the faith’ is the monarch, with 26 bishops or ‘lords spiritual’ sitting by right in the House of Lords.

“There are thousands of parishes and vicars up and down the country. Nonetheless ignorance about the faith –- the ancestral religion of the English people –- is frightening. No one knows what Christianity teaches, because churchmen no longer have the courage to tell.

“How can you blame someone for going astray, when he has never been told about the straight and narrow?

“I recall what a Muslim friend, a city gent, told me: ‘My colleagues seem to know of only one way of enjoying themselves,’ and he listed some disagreeable things. ‘When I asked them why they did that’, he added, ‘I realised no one had ever told them of an alternative, better way of being.’

“Precisely. The church should have, loud and clear. Tragically, she has not. Hence, her bosses stand condemned in the Lord’s eyes.

“Third, the priest reminded the viewers what Christmas means: God with us, Christ with us. That calls for celebration, if anything does. Joy and merry-making are part of the holy season, along with some austerity in Advent. December 25^th was chosen of old as the birthday of Jesus to overcome certain crass pagan festivals, like the Roman saturnalia.

“The Puritans forbade the observance of Christmas, partly out of a long-faced religiosity but also because they held that for a true believer every day should be a holy day.

“Still, if any feast calls for rejoicing, Christmas is one.

“A rejoicing, mind, in thanksgiving for the Holy Babe of Bethlehem, the Prince of Peace, the Saviour of the World. Yep, Thanksgiving lies at the heart of it all.

“Once in the Underground, a man was lugging a huge case up the stairs. He had great difficulty and struggled much with that. The friend I was with, a robust young man, stepped in and, straining himself, helped the man to lift up the burden all the way up the stairs. Once at the top, the man turned his back on my friend and walked away without saying a single word of thanks.

“My poor friend said nothing, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. It was ugly. What manner of boor would not have the grace of saying ‘thanks’ to one who helped?

“Well, it is the same with God. Human beings should at the very least say ‘thank you’ to God. So the Church should teach and preach not to make people miserable by abstinence -- the credit crunch will see to that –- but to lead people to put that crucial thanksgiving back into Christmas -- a thanksgiving that, by the way, is also what ‘Eucharist,’ Holy Communion, means, something Christ himself enjoined his followers to do ‘in memory of me.’

“Fourth, all right, the C-of-E bosses may be stupid and faithless but it is not all their fault. Maybe not all Professor Dawkins’ doing either, but it is down to secularism, the way we live now, I suppose.

“If only we could go back to the catacombs. When the church was persecuted, it flourished. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the victories to come. But of course ‘the world’ today is too astute to engage in direct persecution. Instead, Christ is ignored. His name is hardly ever mentioned in public life. The media only do so with a sneer.

“Young people are corrupted, while God is imprisoned in our grey, joyless little conventicles, called churches. (Sorry, here I go again, having a go at the church. Can’t help it.)

“Bob Dylan –- do you remember his ‘born again’ phase? He then produced a stirring song called ‘Saved.’ It led some hippies to check out the parish church. When they came out they said they could not understand ‘what Bob Dylan sees in it.’ Quite.

“Fifth, forgive my vanity but it ended a bit inconsequentially, in a big applause. The presenter asked about the scarf I was wearing. ‘It is Palestinian,’ I answered. ‘I wear it in solidarity with them. Because Palestine deserves justice.’ So many in the audience cheered. That was good and it pleased me. I felt the paradox, though.

“The Baby Jesus for me has dual nationality. He is a Jew but also a Palestinian. Huh! A good omen, I think, because if anyone can solve the Israel/Palestine conundrum, He can.”

Amen, Father Frank. God bless you. I wish there were more Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious leaders with your erudition, spirituality, and ecumenism.

Where are we going? Who knows. It's in God's hands.

All the best for the rest of Advent and Christmas as 2008 ends, and prayers, please, for better times in 2009 and beyond.

CLEANING OUT THE MUCK OF ILLINOIS POLITICS

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and the FBI, who arrested Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich for trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat, gave us an advance roadmap of the indictment and corruption about the years-long corruption scandal in Chicago and the indictments and trials that will follow after Barack Obama becomes President of the United States as a result of their investigation. According to the arrest complaint: “On November 3, 2008, Rod Blagojevich talked with Deputy Governor A [unidentified]. This discussion occurred the day before the United States Presidential election, Rod Blagojevich and Deputy Governor A discussed the potential Senate seat vacancy. During the conversation, Rod Blagojevich told Deputy Governor A that if he is not going to get anything of value for the open Senate seat, that Rod Blagojevich will take the Senate seat himself: “if … they’re not going to offer anything of value, then I might just take it.” “Later on November 3, Rod Blagojevich spoke with Advisor A [unidentified]. By this time, media reports indicated that Senate Candidate 1, an advisor to the President-elect, was interested in the Senate seat if it became vacant, and was likely to be supported by the President-elect. During the call, Rod Blagojevich stated, “unless I get something real good [for Senate Candidate 1], shit, I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying.” Rod Blagojevich later stated, “I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain [regarding possible Cabinet appointments he had earlier mentioned in an Obama administration]. And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself." Later, Rod Blagojevich stated that the Senate seat “is a fucking valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.” It is now known that Senate Candidate 1 referenced in U. S. Attorney Fitzgerald’s complaint was Valerie Jarrett, a Democrat, Chicago attorney and business executive, said to be close to Barack and Michelle Obama. Jarrett was announced by Obama after his election to manage the White House Office of Public Liaison in his administration. It is not known why Obama did not press for her appointment to fill his Senate seat – perhaps because he learned Blagojevich was demanding something “of value” for himself and was unwilling to buckle to the governor’s “pay-to-play” demands. This will all come out as the case unfolds. On November 4, the day of the election, the complaint says Blagovich again discussed with his senior staff his need to get something from Obama in exchange for his Senate appointment even an ambassador appointment. The complaint says his top aides advised him not to put a list in writing for what he wanted “in exchange for the Senate seat.” The complaint says co-defendant John Harris, Blagojevich’s chief of staff, again discussed his strategy on getting something of value for himself in exchange for the Senate seat appointment, and Blagojevich stated “that the ‘trick … is how do you conduct indirectly … a negotiation’ for the Senate seat. Thereafter, Rod Blagojevich analogized his situation to that of a sports agent shopping a potential free agent to various teams, stating ‘how much are you offering [President-elect]? What are you offering [Senate Candidate 2]? … Can always go to [Senate Candidate 3].’” It is now known that Senate Candidate 2 referenced in the complaint was Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a Democrat, who recently said in televised interviews that she has not met Blagojevich during her four years as attorney general and that the governor has never sought to develop and contact or liaison with her. Madigan said she had not sought the Senate appointment, and since learning of Blagojevich’s “pay-for-play” scheme regarding the Senate appointment and other state appointments has said the governor should resign forthwith. Madigan has not commented on her relationship with Obama and whether she discussed the Senate appointment with him or his representatives. It is not definitely known publicly who was Senate Candidate 3, but it has been speculated in news reports to have been U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Illinois Democrat. The Hill newspaper in Washington reported that Schakowsky was “mentioned as a fallback option if Blagojevich scheme [for pay-to-play] did not pan out.” Why Schakowsky was the “fallback option” is not known, except this indicates a huge breakdown at some point bwtween Blagojevich and Obama, who was probably briefed on the federal corruption investigation, and this should be explained more fully. Senate Candidate 4 has been identified as Louanner Peters, a deputy governor in Blagojevich’s own administration who handles social issues. Peters was deputy campaign manager of Blagojevich’s 2006 re-election campaign for governor and previously chief-of-staff to former U.S. Rep. Gus Savage, Illinois Democrat, 2nd Congressional District, 1981-93. The discussions on this possible appointment have not been revealed, and whether Obama or his representatives were involved, another missing piece of the puzzle that will no doubt be fleshed out as the corruption case unfolds. Senate Candidate 5 has been identified as Democratic U.S. Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois 2nd Congressional District, who has served from 1995 to present and is a member of the House Appropriations, Labor, and International Relations Committees. Jackson’s attorney and Jackson held separate press conferences the day after Blagojevich’s arrest and arraignment in the corruption case, acknowledged that Jackson had met only the day before with Blagojevich in a private 90-minute meeting, and denied any “pay-for-play” discussion, although it is known that staff intermediaries were told that Blagojevich had insisted that Jackson and his political machine cough-up $1.5-million for Blagojevich to appoint Jackson to the Senate seat. Jackson and his attorney told reporters he had met with U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald or his deputies to give them a full report before the governor was arrested and said he would be meeting with the prosecution team in the next few days. Jackson said there was never any “pay-to-play” discussion by him or his representatives with Blagojevich or his representatives, although Fitzgerald’s complaint says there were discussions leading up to the Blagojevich-Jackson meeting of payments Blagojevich wanted from Jackson totaling $1.5 million to the governor’s political action committee if he was to get the appointment to succeed Obama in the U.S. Senate. Jackson denied this, but straightforwardly acknowledged he was the named Candidate 5 in the prosecutor’s complaint, which he knew from a meeting with people in the U.S. attorney’s office the day before Blagojevich was arrested. Jackson also publicly joined Obama’s earlier call through his spokesman for Blagojevich to resign and get out of the way of the choice of Obama’s successor and further official duties as governor because of the taint of the corruption charges against him and the ongoing federal investigation. At a televised news conference, Jackson said: “Jackson: I thought mistakenly I was being considered because of my 13 years of hard work and I had earned it.” He said he had met with the U.S. attorney’s staff before Blagojevich was arrested and called on Blagojevich to resign without trying to appoint a U.S. Senate replacement for Obama. Jackson and his team are obviously pissed off. They are apparently ready to help Fitzgerald’s corruption case, as are many others in the months to come. All are coming to realize that Fitzgerald has them by the cajonés. He and the FBI have 300 hours of telephone wiretaps of Blagojevich’s phones in the governor’s office, including co-defendant chief-of-staff to the governor John Harris and their staff, and at their homes. Hullo. All telephone calls were wiretapped and recorded by the feds for at least three months. That means all calls with potential U.S. Senate successors to Obama and their representatives, trying to arrange meetings and payments to Blagojevich for appointment to Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat are on tape and in the hands of the FBI and prosecutor Fitzgerald. The tapes will be used at trial. We’ve only got quotations and heard snippets of just four minutes of those tapes where Blagojevich was recorded as saying “f- this and m-f-this, this is gold,” and saying he wanted to be paid-off for his appointment. The transcriptions of the people Blagojevich, co-defendant Harris, and the governor’s aides were talking to have not been released. Fitzgerald has all the conversations and the voices and identities of the parties involved. We must expect that Fitzgerald has already got, or will get, court orders and subpoenas to confiscate all of Blagojevich’s schedule and telephone records from his secretary’s and other aides’ daily records, which have recorded every minute of the governor’s day and activities. If Blagojevich and his aides in the governor’s office destroy any records, add obstruction of justice to the charges against them. Fitzgerald and his team are intrepid prosecutors. The governor and his cronies won’t get away with much, if anything. And Fitzgerald’s ongoing criminal investigation will get a lot of people he might indict as conspirators and enablers of the criminal scheme to turn and become government witnesses, which will result in an avalanche of evidence when Blagojevich, Harris, and others to be indicted go to trial. Presumption of innocence is a given. Everyone has the right of a fair trial. Blagojevich in his own public appearances and statements has carried on as though none of this was happening. But a man of Fitzgerald’s stature would not be seeking an indictment to end the corruption in Illinois politics and government if he didn’t have sufficient evidence already to pursue the case and send Blagojevich away and others away. Others will obviously become part of the stable of people to be indicted and perhaps jailed for a long time unless they cooperate fully with the prosecutor, which is why all the Kaopectate is flying off the drug store shelves. According to the complaint, Blagojevich was insisting on any position he could get from the Obama administration, or a highly-paid job with the Red Cross as Elizabeth Dole had held. As one reads the complaint, it is apparent that Blagojevich went crazy in efforts to cash-in on Obama’s election as President and his role as Illinois governor in the appointment of Obama’s successor to the U.S. Senate. Now almost everyone involved, including Obama and Illinois’ other Democratic U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and most of the proferred Senate successor candidates themselves, have now distanced themselves from Blagojevich Not many involved in the negotiations to see him paid-off for the Senate appointment and past appointments as governor to enrich himself and his political and business cronies apparently want to face criminal indictment as well for consorting with racketeers, accepting kickbacks from them to appoint cronies of convicted racketeer and money-launderer Antoin “Tony” Rezko to Illinois state boards and commissions with sway over multi-millions of dollars of state contracts and investments, and kickbacks and outright extorted payments to the governor himself for “pay-to-play” appointments numbering in the hundreds. Fitzgerald’s investigation continues, and you can believe a lot of people have gone down to their local Rite-Aid or Walgreen to get a few bottles of Kaopectate to save them from soiling their pants. In military and political parlance, it’s called circling the wagons. All those involved --especially those named even with numbers in Fitzgerald’s copiously documented complaint filed with the U.S. District Court against Blagojevich are distancing themselves from Blagojevich, express “sadness and soberness” about his apparent wrongdoing, as Obama did publicly, called on the governor to resign, they want him ought-here ASAP to save their own necks from the political fallout of the corruption revelations and Obama’s transition to power and the White House. It’s all a charade. Those of us who have covered politics across the nation for decades know that everyone knows everyone in Chicago, Illinois politics and especially those who have worked with each other for political gain over many years. In the Blagojevich corruption scandal, those do include Barack Obama, who pushed Rod Blagojevich to run for governor as his senior political advisor when Blagojevich decided to leave his three-term U.S. House seat from Illinois’ 5th Congressional District to run for governor in 1997; Blagojevich’s successor in his U.S. House seat, Rahm Emanuel, who Obama has tapped as his White House chief-of-staff; David Axelrod, who Obama has picked as his White House political director come January 20, 2009, and who was chief political strategist for Blagojevich’s three successful congressional campaigns and his two successful campaigns for governor of Illinois. It also includes all the political minions and campaign contributors who have been shared for more than a decade by Obama and Blagojevich as they climbed the political ladder to top government positions in Illinois and now even the White House. These people talked often, maybe every day, over the years; they had strategy meetings togethert to advance their political cause every step of the way; they recruited contributers together and battled opponents in their own Democratic Party and the Republican Party. In other words, these guys, their political helpers and official government-paid staff aides and camoaign workers have been twinned at the hip for more than a decade. They talked on the phone and met all the time as they plotted together to advance themselves. So for any of them to say they did not talk with Governor Blagojevich directly or with John Harris, the governor’s chief-of-staff for many years and others about the governor’s appointment to succeed Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate is simply ludicrous – and a flat-out lie. Juan Williams, highly respected reporter and commentator formerly of The Washington Post newspaper for many years and since with National Public Radio, laid them out on Brit Hume’s daily show on Fox News. Said Williams: This is a rats’ nest of political corruption, no doubt.” About Obama’s involvement with longtime political allies Rod Blagojevich, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and others, Williams said: “I can’t help but taint him [Obama],” citing the fact that Obama got a sweetheart real estate deal for propert next to convicted racketeer and swindler Tony Rezko in a fashionable Chicago neighborhood. Juan Williams gave Obama the fashionable pass, saying, “There is no evidence of any connection [by Obama] to this corruption.” Newsmen want to be in a position to work with the incoming Obama administration and beat their competitors in the news business, so there are a lot of news professionals, particularly in Chicago and Washington, D.C., now running for cover, but Williams was courageous as always to state his mind and the truth as a pioneering African-American journalist in recent times. Williams also said, sympathetically as an Obama supporter and admirer, that he believed the current Illinois scandal involving Blagojevich, his administration as governor and the political cronyism routed out by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitgerald that will result in a later indictment of Governor Blagojevich “is going to dog him [Obama] going into the inauguration and peel away from his credibility … when he should be a superstar and having a honeymoon.” Respected columnist Charles Krauthammer said in the panel discussion, “What we are getting is a belated interest in the muck out of which Obama rose.” Mara Liasson, also of National Public Radio, said: “What we are going to get is a special election.” I predict and believe this will be a slam-dunk by the prosecutor, who has a record of enormous success in combating government corruption over many years, sending Blagojevich’s corrupt successor, Governor George Ryan and U.S. Representative Dan Rostenkowski to prison for thievery and corruption, plus many others. This is not a prosecutor to joke with. He and his able staff always dot their i’s and cross their t’s and always get convictions. The unanswered question is whether President Barack Obama, when he takes office January 20, 2009, would have the audacity to fire Patrick J. Fitzgerald as U.S. attorney and replace him with someone else who might not continue investigation and prosecute this case. I believe it probable that many heads will roll in the case Fitzgerald and his team have prepared and are going to bring for indictments and trial. But it’s a tradition for presidents to fire all U.S. attorneys upon taking office and replace them with their own people. I believe President Obama, after he takes office on January 20, 2009, would make a huge mistake if he fires Fitzgerald while the Blagojevich is under way, and it will be a huge first test and measure of his presidency and his own credibility if he does. Few Americans would trust him afterwards.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER ON A STICKY FLIGHT TOGETHER

The arrest and imminent indictment of Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich for trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s soon-to-be vacant U.S. Senate seat is the latest chapter in the unfolding years-long corruption scandal in Chicago. It is hard to see how Obama can avoid becoming embroiled in the scandal after becoming President -- just as President Bill Clinton was dogged for years by investigations and indictment in the Whitewater land development scandal in Arkansas when he was governor there. The central figure in the Blagojevich corruption scandal is recently convicted Chicago racketeer Antoin “Tony” Rezko, 52, a longtime friend and chief political fundraiser for Governor Blagojevich and President-elect Obama throughout both their political careers going back to the mid-1990s. Obama also served as “top political adviser” to Blagojevich, a former three-term Congressman from Illinois’ 5th U.S. House district in Chicago until he first ran for Governor in 2002 and was re-elected in 2006 with continued help from Obama and U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who succeeded Blagojevich in the House in 2003 when the new governor , a Serbian-American, took office. Emanuel is to become Obama’s chief of staff in the White House, as Obama, Blagojevich, and Emanuel have been partners together and “birds of a feather” in continuous dog-eat-dog Chicago machine politics in the Democratic party for more than a decade.

As U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitgerald criminal investigation unfolds and the imminent indictment of Blagojevich occurs, the obvious and pertinent questions for Obama, Emanuel, and soon to be White House political director David Axelrod are "What did they know and when did they know it?" Surely Fitzgerald, with a solid reputation as a relentless prosecutor, will want to know and move to find out before Blagojevich comes to trial and possibly others are indicted. It seems apparent that Fitzgerald moved to arrest Blagojevich when he did to pre-empt the governor from actually making a U.S. Senate appointment before the U.S. attorney has more answers about an effort to sell the seat to a high bidder, or whatever. There's obviously a lot of juggling going on. It get’s even stickier for Obama has he gets ready to assume the presidency in six weeks, because as a community organizer and state legislator for many years before he ran for the U.S. Senate and then for the White House, Obama’s tight circle of social friends in Chicago along with First Lady to-be Michelle Obama have included Rod and Patricia Blagojevich, and the governors wife, Patricia; Rahm Emauel and his wife, Amy; and Syrian-born Tony Rezko -- civil engineer- road designer, one-time Papa Johns Pizza chain owner and their business associates and friends. Illinois First Lady Patricia Blagojevich, a licensed real estate broker, was Rezko’s business partner for more than a decade, making annual commissions ranging from $38,000. She has benefited from no-bid state contracts approved by her husband’s appointees, receiving $113,700 in 2006 from Anita Mahajan, who according to news reports owns a urinalysis company with a no-bid contract with the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services. The U.S. attorney’s criminal complaint against Governor Blagojevich calls the corruption scheme that he is accused of implementing “pay-to-play” –meaning the governor extorted money and kickbacks with the help of Rezko and others in return for placing Rezko cronies on state boards and commissions so they could organize lucrative state contracts, legal work, consulting contracts and so forth in order to line their pockets and that of the governor. The apparent conspiracy by Governor Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, to sell Obama’s U.S. Senate seat, a central charge of the criminal complaint – and other state offices, is still under investigation, along with other potential criminal conspiracy. Further charges are expected. The ongoing criminal probe is closely investigating whether there was involvement or help from Obama or a wider conspiracy by the President-elect, his designated White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod, another longtime Obama and Blagojevich political and campaign strategist in the governor’s congressional campaigns, who is going with Obama to the White House Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s complaint against Blagojevich that will be basis of his impending indictment for corruption includes specific instances of fraud, attempted sale of political offices, extortion, and kickbacks, based on a 76-page affidavit by FBI Special Agent Daniel W. Cain, who has led the lengthy FBI criminal investigation against Blagojevich, Rezko, and their associates. Rezko has been held at Chicago's Metropolitan Correctional Center since his conviction on 16 counts of money-laundering, fraud, kickbacks during a nine-week trial., facing a possible life prison sentence. He is said to be working on a deal with prosecutors that would bring him a reduced prison sentence in return for testimony against other targets of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s continuing investigation. Rezko is also under indictment, along with a business associate, for wire fraud related to charges that he sold his pizza business to a straw buyer at an inflated price in order to obtain millions of dollars in loans from GE Capital. Rezko has pled not guilty to these charges and the trial is scheduled to begin in 2009. The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times newspapers firs reported signs of Rezko's willingness to give information to the authorities came following the October 30, 2008 indictment of William Cellini longtime Illinois power broker another Blagojevich fund-raiser William Cellini. Cellini was charged with conspiring with Rezko, business partner Stuart Levine and others to award contracts with the state's Teachers Retirement System (TRS) to companies which made campaign contributions to the Blagojevich campaign. The extortion charge was part of Cellini's indictment. The wider conspiracy still under investigation includes a number of incidents which cooperating witnesses have already testified to the FBI, according to the unsealed criminal complaint against Blagojevich: • Ali Ata, a convicted business racketeer associate of Rezka, testified in May 2008 that he discussed with Blagojevich potential appointment to a high-level state position, for which the governor asked him to pay him $25,000 and to raise another $25,000 for his Friends of Blagojevich political committee, of which Ata testified he paid $5,000 himself. Ata said he put an enveloped with the first $25,000 check on a table when he met with Blagojevich to finalize his appointment in July 2003 to head the Illinois Capital Development Board, and then also to the Illinois Finance Authority. The Illinois Finance Authority (IFA), like the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA) created by Bill Clinton when he was governor of in Little Rock for 12 years, issues tax-free low-interesty bonds to businesses and health-care companies for business development, capital construction, building of hospitals and so forth. Both companies who obtain the bonds and kaw firms that help put the deals together reap ,multi-millions of dollars in fees and then political operatives for Blagojevich go round with a tin-cup to rasise political contributions from those who benefit – as did Clinton in Arkansas when he raised his first $3-million to launch his successful 1992 presidential run. It’s a classic “pay-to-play” scheme. • Joseph Cari, another Rezko associate and significant contributor to Democratic causes, includiong the Obama and Blagojevich campaigns, testified at Rezko’s trial that Blagojevich had told him he could use his power as governor to appoint people to important state boards and commissions and award lurative state contracts to generate campaign contributions from powerful business executives, lawyers, doctors, and political action committees. Cari, who was national finance chairman for Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 national presidential campaign. He had no prior criminal history and received a 2-1/2-year prison sentence under a plea agreement wherein he pled guilty to attempted extortion of JER investment company that was attempting to get Illinois state investment. According to U.S. Attorney’s criminal complaint, Blagojevich had discussed and conspired with Cari to implement the extortion scheme during a political fundraising trip with Cari to New York City in October 2003. Cari testified that Blagojevich had told him and other he wanted to run for president himself. Other Rezko associates and conspirators involved in Blagojevich’s “pay-to-pay” scheme were Chicago businessmen Stuart Levine and Chris Kelly, who both were appointed by Blagojevich to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board and the Illinois Teachers Retirement System, where with the governor and chief-of-staff Harris they could organize state contract awards and target state investments for political and monetary advantage. Birds of a feather on a sticky flight together thanks to intrepid work of U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald and the FBI team, the evidence of conspiracy and corruption already uncovered in the probe so far, and further charges and indictments apparently to come. “Out of the Daley machine in Chicago and Illinois Democratic roughhouse to the White House,” a former U.S. attorney commented to this reporter. “Patrick Fitzgerald could be the 2008 version of Eliot Ness, though he serves at the pleasure of the president. Wonder how much longer Fitzgerald will serve after January 20, 2009?” the former U.S. attorney opined.

ANOTHER SENATOR KENNEDY?

Caroline Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg is a darling of America, an elegant lady in her parents’ image who would be a wonderful successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton as U.S. senator from New York if she wants the seat when Senator Clinton resigns to become President Obama’s secretary of State.

News reports state that Caroline Schlossberg, JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy’s daughter, has indicated she would accept the Senate appointment from New York Governor David A. Paterson when Mrs. Clinton resigns the seat to join President Obama’s Cabinet.

It sends shivers up one’s back to think that JFK’s daughter would become a member of the U.S. Senate, possibly helping revive an era of better more authentic politics that her father in his day called the New Frontier.

Those of us old enough to have seen toddler Caroline Kennedy standing there with her widowed mother 45 years ago in 1963, along with brother John John, waving as the casket of their assassinated father was on its way to Arlington National Cemetery have since watched her admiringly from afar as a very elegant and private person.

Caroline Kennedy 22 years ago married Edwin Arthur Schlossberg, the son of Ukrainian Jews and an internationally renowned designer of museum participatory programs through his company ESI Design in New York City. The wonderful Brooklyn City Museum is one of Schlossberg’s famous projects.

The couple have three lovely children, who they have raised:

•  Rose Kennedy Schlossberg, 20, named after Caroline's grandmother, JFK’s mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.

•  Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg, 18, named after Edwin’s former design colleague, lithographer Tatiana Grossman, and Edwin's grandmother, Celia.

•  John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, 15, another Jack Kennedy.

The family lives on New York City’s Park Avenue.

Caroline Kennedy went to Harvard University in Cambridge,  Massachusetts, her dad’s alma mater, and Columbia University Law School in New York City, where she has been an attorney and author for many years as she has lived a quiet private family life and participated in charity work and supported her husband’s museum projects and the arts.

She also did much for her mother, the former First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, who was a marvelous horsewoman and philanthropist, who loved the suburban Virginia horse country where her parents lived during her father’s presidency as a welcome retreat from Washington.

There are several lovely schools here in Middleburg that the Schlossberg’s would love for Jack –- Foxcroft, Hill School, or Notre Dame Academy –- as well as Loudoun Country Day School in nearby Leesburg.

Nearby Shenandoah University in historic Winchester, a renowned music and theater conservatory, has become a full-fledged liberal arts college that draws the best faculty talent in the region, which would be perfect for Rose and Tatiana unless they wanted the more cosmopolitan atmosphere in New York City or Boston.

But entering the New Year of 2009 with the possibility that John F. Kennedy’s daughter might become a member of the U.S. Senate literally brings goose bumps. The New Frontier's next generation.

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

Here we go again, one hopes.

SOVIET MIDDLEBURG

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This piece was posted on my Typepad blog site in January 2008 but somehow got deleted, so here it is again for the record.) The little town where I live has been taken over by wolverine bureaucrats. It’s a toney town, known for having Jack and Jackie Kennedy live here, ride their horses here, that has tons of toney nouveau-riche people, and the streets are filled with BMW cars and people walking all over the place every day. Where the Safeway was when I was growing up became Billy Leach’s hardware store and is now Linda Tripp’s Christmas Sleigh shop – Linda being famous as Monica Lewinsky’s buddy when Monica was blowing President Bill Clinton. So I got arrested one recent evening – January 11, 2008 -- woken up by the Middleburg einzatsgruppen banging loudly on my door, asked to step out of my house in my pajamas, arrested and handcuffed by a Middleburg police officer on my front porch without my Miranda rights being read, and pushed into a police car and carted off the jail on charges I was “drunk in public.” The police chief, Steven Webber, later sent me a letter on January 22, 2008, saying the police visit was “following a domestic related incident.” That was absurd as I live alone and have lived alone at my mother’s home since she died in August 2006. But Police Chief Webber was kind enough to tell me the complainant for the arrest was my own sister. Valerie Embrey, through her attorney, Joan K. Fine of Winchester, by telephone, no inquiry was done prior to the arrest. My sister, Valerie, apparently was upset and angry after I had yelled at her over the telephone in a conversation when she said she wanted to force me to sell our jointly-owned house bequeathed by our mother and force me out of the house. Yes, I told her to stuff it where the light doesn’t shine and hung up on her. She made the call to me. I did not have to put up with her unwanted telephone insolence and silly demands to sell a valuable paid-for property in a bad real estate market. So I told her to stuff it and hung up on her. Then the police showed up, woke me up, handcuffed me without telling me what it was all about, did not read me my Miranda rights, and carted me off to jail in my pajamas, where I was stripped, put in an orange jump-suit, fingerprinted and photographed, and thrown in a cold cell with a metal bench and toilet, ultimately with a multitude of other prisoners. And Middleburg Police Chief StevenWebber told me in his January 22 letter, a week after I was released from jail onto the street in my pajamas, that “additional charges are pending” – apparently because I pushed the police officer’s arm away and asked him what was going on when they asked me to step outside my house, grabbed me and handcuffed me without inquiring or explaining anything. Assault? The police were the assaulters, not me. I was just trying to defend myself. After the police arrested me and carted me off the hoosecow, giving sister Valerie 24-hour access to the house without me there, she came in with a paid appraiser and inventoried all the contents, including our mother’s and my own property, in an apparent effort to gain some advantage in the ultimate settlement of division of tangible personal property under our mother’s will. So I was double raped – in the Loudoun County jail thanks to my own sister, Valerie, and again by her as she burgled our house after she had me carted out by the police on bogus trumped-up charges, in violation of my civil rights. Well, I made it back home. This whole stinking assault and Soviet Middleburg police violation of my civil rights and my sister Valerie’s role (and her attorney Joan K. Fine’s role) in all of this will not stand. Martin Luther King Jr. walked across the bridge in Selma, Alabama, many years ago in behalf of human rights and dignity. Just because I’m white, why can’t I have those rights as well? My parents moved to Middleburg, Virginia, in 1956, when whites and blacks were segregated and told to use separate facilities. I sat at the counter at the New York Café, now the Coach Stop in Middleburg, in 1961, when the Reverend Earnest A. “Froggy” DeBordenave led us in a civil rights sit-in that desegregated this then white-only restaurant that would not serve blacks. We arrived with black patrons at the New York Café that day in 1961. My mother told me not to get on the school bus after my father refused to write a note to Loudoun County High School to get me excused from going to school that day. So I played hookey to participate in a historic sit-in. After getting served with black patrons at the New York Café, we walked round the corner to the Middleburg Pharmacy soda fountain and got served there as well, thus ending so-called separate-but-equal requirements in Middleburg. The terrible shame is that tiny historic Middleburg has changed over the years, been taken over by nouveau-riche dilettantes with none of the class and manners my parents taught us. They are low-class yet nouveau-riche Jack Kent Cooke types, no grace and manners, but somehow rich, a lot of inherited money, contributing nothing to the good of the order except their spending and crass narcissistic lack of any class or attributes. Such a pity.

THOSE WHO ARE DEAD ARE NOT DEAD

As we start the first week after Thanksgiving, two stories jump out.

The first is that the Reverend George M. Docherty, of Alexandria, Pennsylvania, Presbyterian minister and an icon of American lore, died at his home on Thanksgiving Day at age 97.

It was Docherty’s famed February 1954 sermon as pastor at the Nation’s Capital’s New York Avenue First Presbyterian Church that convinced President Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower to push Congress to get the words “under God”  added to the American Pledge of Allegiance.

Requiesat in pacem eternam.

The band Coldplay’s recent album, “Viva la Vida,” has a mournful song that says: “Those who are dead are not dead, they’re just living in my head… You thought you might be a ghost, you didn’t get to heaven, but you made it close.”

Well, Coldplay has a nice sound but their worldview stinks.

People who are not mortal sinners do go to heaven and their spirits live on forever. That’s just my belief from biblical scripture.

Jesus Christ himself went to the tomb of Lazarus of Bethany with Martha after Lazarus had been dead four days and raised him back to life, according to John’s Bible gospel.

According to the New American Standard Bible’s version of John’s gospel, Jesus told Martha on arriving after Lazarus had died, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me shall live even if he dies.”

The King James version of the Bible quotes the conversation between Jesus and Martha this way, according to disciple John:

Jesus: “Thy brother shall rise again.” Martha: “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus: “I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” Martha: “Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.” (John 11:23-27).

The second unfolding story is that incoming President Barack Obama, labeled by columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell as “our first motivational speaker president,” is putting together an impressive coalition of advisers and presumptive appointees to run his government, despite the reaction of some seasoned political commentators that the president-elect’s named team so far is  “Clintonesque.”

Bob Tyrrell put it this way in a piece headlined “Public Nuisances”:

“He has not shied away from bringing former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers onto his economic team as head of his National Economic Council.

“Summers was a proper critic of Freddie and Fannie, having noted this past summer that "the illusion that the companies were doing virtuous work made it impossible to build a political case for serious regulation." This virtuous work was extending mortgages to those who could not afford those mortgages. The toxic mortgages were then bundled in with healthy mortgages and sold around the world by Wall Street geniuses like some enormous chain letter whose day of reckoning came some months ago.

“The endeavor was a fantasy that had to end badly, and so it has.Yet at a certain level, the constituent elements of the Democratic Party are given to fantasy and excess.

“Consider the most vocal critics of Summers. They are not bankers or economists. They are feminists, often feminist scientists, who forced him out of the presidency of Harvard for his recognition that women of genius are not as plentiful as men of genius in the sciences and math. Now, what he cited is a fact.

“Summers drew no invidious conclusions and offered no program that would limit the number of lady scientists. He just noted the data in a forum supposedly open to free discourse. Kaboom -- the women of the fevered brow drove him from office. Remind me not to read a book aloud in Harvard Yard.

“Now, in this time of economic crisis, the women of the fevered brow attempted to keep Summers out of the Obama government despite his demonstrated economic acumen. And remember these feminists claim to be a force for justice and fairness. How long do they want to ban Summers from public life?

“It was rumored that Obama wanted Summers back as head of Treasury. Perhaps the angry feminists kept Summers out of his old office.

“The man the president-elect has announced as his secretary of treasury, Timothy Geithner, is probably a suitable replacement. The economic team Obama is assembling strikes me as pretty good, but the way it was assembled is a bit worrisome. Are all the fanatics in the Democratic Party going to be able to get a hearing with this president?

“He is going to have to maintain both feet on the ground in the months ahead. The delusional malcontents that a Democratic presidential candidate courts in an election can cause a Democratic administration grave problems.

“That brings to mind the visuals that the president-elect is using when he addresses the American people. He appears enhaloed by American flags, not one or two but a whole ring of flags. Moreover, he speaks from a lectern proclaiming ‘The Office of the President Elect.’

“In point of fact, there is no Office of the President Elect, and Obama is not even in an office. He is on a stage. Arguably, a stage has been his office during much of his public life, given the fact that he will be America's first motivational speaker to become president.

“Actually, I doubt that this is the point Obama is trying to make. He is engaging in theater. Yet this dramatic setting is implausible. According to statute, he will not actually be president-elect until the Electoral College meets on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December (Dec. 15 this year) to elect him according to the votes cast Nov. 4.

“My advice to our incoming president is to avoid the implausible stage effects. There is plenty of drama out there, for instance a real war and a real economic crisis. Now he has appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to be chairman of a new presidential advisory board to oversee our emergence from this economic mess.

“Volcker is one of the great figures of his generation, known for slaying inflation in the early 1980s and a dozen other contributions to the commonweal. It is a sign that our first motivational speaker president might actually know what he is talking about -- when he is talking seriously.”

We’ll see whether the first “motivational speaker” president has what it takes, and can carry us from the Bush era to a better era, as Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden have promised, without violating Coldplay’s conclusion that “Those who are dead are not dead,” and that there is a true American vision of “One nation under God” with a promise of eternal life for all.

Space shuttle Endeavor’s recently ended wonderful successful mission to refurbish and enlarge the international space station certainly gave us renewed hope that is so. No lives lost, just a toolbag.

Mission accomplished. And those who are dead are not dead. They live within us as we carry on.

DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING

It was a very happy Thanksgiving Day in Middleburg, Virginia. Turned off the television, shut off sad reports of  mayhem in Bombay, India, and spent a lovely afternoon with my first-born daughter, Leslie, her husband Noah, and their infant pumpkin, Carmen Thomas, my first grandchild, just nine months old, who is a true beauty with lively blue eyes, takes in everything around her, and has a truly lovely temperament.

Leslie and Noah drove into the village with Carmen Thomas and we had a traditional turkey dinner at the nearby local Red Fox Inn, where more than 100 years before the guerrilla leader of the Confederate Army’s “Grey Ghosts,” Colonel John Singleton Mosby, during America’s Civil War, was shot through the shoulder by a Union army horseman who just happened to ride into town and spied him through an upstairs bedroom window as he was undressing in candlelight for sleep before the next day’s battle.

Mosby survived the flesh wound, got out of the building to his stabled horse, and led his Confederate rangers to rout the Union army enemy again. That’s why they named the major road in these parts after him –- U.S. Route 50 west of the Nation’s Capital –- John Singleton Mosby Highway.

Little Carmen Thomas was all eyes throughout our Thanksgiving dinner at the Red Fox --looking around at all the surrounding people enjoying their meals at nearby tables, perhaps the most placid happy baby I have ever known.

She was very interested in every person, every move by the wait staff, happy for almost two hours as her mom and dad and I conversed and enjoyed the turkey, sweet potatoes, salad, and apple and pecan pie, coffee afterwards.

After they drove off, I waited awhile before turning the television back on, knowing I was going to get the umpteenth repeat of Fox News’ regurgitation of the mayhem in India, plus the annoying weight-loss ads.

How many different ways can you tell the same horrible story of terrorism in Bombay, interspersed with lengthy advertisements featuring writhing sexy dancers who say you can lose 50 pounds of fatty weight without difficulty?

Instead, I turned on cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s album, Yo-Yo Ma & Friends, and listened to the most soothing Christmas renditions of “Joy to the World,” and some Latin tunes that would have had Carmen Thomas dancing. One cut in particular, titled “Vassourinhas,” features brothers Sergio and Odair Assad on acoustic guitars, and the next cut, “Improvisation on Donna Nobis Pacem,” (“Give Us Peace”) has the most wonderful clarinet solo that I have ever heard by Paquito D’ Rivera, followed by another lovely jazzy piece with Alon Yavnai on piano and Yo-Yo Ma on cello. It’s one of the best musical albums I’ve heard this year. Terrific jazz renditions of classic Christmas tunes.

But the news about the mayhem in Bombay won’t go away.

My Anglican priest friend in London, Father Frank Julian Gelli, who was spiritual advisor to Princess Diana for several years before her tragic death, calls it “Bloodlust.”

Here is the latest of Father Frank’s always poignant essays. I cannot quote it in snippets, so you have to read the whole thing. Father Frank’s rants are quite incredible.

FATHER FRANK JULIAN GELLI

BLOODLUST

NOVEMBER 27, 2008

In the movie Dirty Harry, tough cop Clint Eastwood gets asked why he thinks a murderous psychopath called the Scorpio will kill again. ‘Because he enjoys it’, deadpan Clint returns.

Quite.

Scorpio, a common criminal, kills because he gets a kick out of it. But, you know, so did at least one of the gunmen responsible for yesterday’s Bombay (Mumbay? No, thanks.) attacks.

Don’t care if he calls himself a holy warrior, one of the mujahedeen, a freedom-fighter, whatever.

As I examine his blurred photo splashed over the Metro paper front page, I feel morally certain: this gun-toting guy enjoys it. A rictus over his young face, eyes glinting, the hunter’s craving for blood is all over his stance. He is having a whale of a time. He wants to kill. Because he likes it.

This morning the alarm clock interrupted my strange dream. There was a man on fire. People pointed at him and laughed. While shaving I listened to an Indian voice on radio, some counter-terrorist expert, blabbing about the clash of civilisations. (Incendiary stuff. Synchronicity, perhaps?) The terrorists are Islamists who have declared war on the infidels, he claimed.

The usual suspects, Al Qaeda and so on, were evoked. Terrorists themselves no doubt will lend him credence. The familiar lists of stock grievances will be paraded. Kashmir, Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnia. I would not discount an over-determination of causes at work there. Yet, I stick to my hunch: that boy killed because he enjoyed it.

No reason to be shocked. Terrorists are morally bad. The priest states that loud and clear. They are bad above all when they target the innocent.

But they are also universal whipping boys. They are like Dr Freud’s id. The dark side. That unconscious where you expel all disagreeable, unacceptable things about yourself.

Soldiers, on the other hand, are kosher. They are "our boys." In fact, soldiering has always involved killing and many soldiers must have relished it.

Today’s secular pieties portray Western armies as engaged in lovely humanitarian, almost charitable activities. Assisting peasants, aiding refugees, helping girls to go to school, that kind of laudable thing.

Military people interviewed by the media sound more and more like benevolent social workers.

I surmise, however, that many SAS, Ghurkhas and paras too have a bit of a dark side. Don’t they ever feel the occasional thrill when they get their man? They too probably "enjoy it." To pretend otherwise may make many feel good but it can’t be true.

In some "primitive" societies a youth was not considered a real man until he killed his first enemy. That was the case amongst certain tribes.

But the Romans also enjoyed seeing gladiators slaughtering each other in the arena.

Despite the insights of Stoic thinkers like Marcus Aurelius ("a spider catches flies; a soldier, barbarians –- where is the difference?"), the general culture was pretty savage.

Nor were God’s own people different. The Hebrew king Alexander Jannaeus sat down to eat a hearty meal while watching thousands of his vanquished enemies being tortured to death.

The father of a friend still shudders when he recalls the sadism he suffered at the hands of the Japanese when a POW, and those civilised carpet-bombing pilots in WWII. How many of them did not feel a certain inner glow in releasing their death cargoes?

I wonder.

Long ago, Saint Augustine wrote about the evils of bloodlust. While rejecting absolute pacifism, he conjured up the image of the Christian just warrior, who should fight the enemy not with hatred, with desire to hurt and dominate, but with justice and with "with sorrow in his heart."

That is not impossible. And it is commendable. A kind of ideal. But such ethical warriors cannot have been thick on the ground even when there were Christian armies, I suspect, though I could be wrong.

The evil tendency in human beings is not easily subjugated.

Depressing?

A lot, but there is hope. It is called Advent. The church season immediately before Xmas.

Advent Sunday falls indeed on November 30^th. The first of four weeks preceding the feast of the Incarnation called Christmas. Leading up to the explosion of joy for Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. Hence a time of spiritual preparation.

For the celebration of Him who Cometh. He comes around every year, naturally. Christianity, like Islam and Judaism, does not subscribe to the Hindu and Buddhist views of cyclical time. Of the eternal recurrence of the same, as Fred Nietzsche would put it. Instead, it affirms a linear, progressive development of sacred history, marked by unique divine interventions, like Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation and Redemption.

Yet the church calendar preserves a bit of cyclical time. Because holy seasons like Advent come round again each year. A chance to relive spiritually, or at least to ponder, certain tremendous truths.

Why is it that Jesus of Nazareth never killed anyone?

Why is it that when he was reviled he did not revile back in return?

Why did he forgive his persecutors when they were about to nail him to a Cross?

There was no bloodlust in him nor did he ever urge his followers to go out and kill, with sorrow or otherwise.

Violent people of all the world, if you have ears to hear, do hear.

It is easy to duck the challenge posed by these questions, sure.

By pointing to the disgraceful behavior in history of all too many followers of Jesus -- the burning of heretics, the persecutions of the Jews, the internecine wars.

Only the other week, Christian monks in the Holy Land were cracking each other skulls with crowbars over some petty disputes in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Love. Enough to make you cry.

But the Gospels precisely challenge and subvert all that.

Listen.

The Sermon on the Mount sounds like a shotgun (a spiritual one) going off: Do not return evil for evil.

Instead, love your enemy. Help him. Turn the other cheek. Give to him who asks you. Go the second mile. Forgive. Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.

If human beings gave that a go, bloodlust would be no more.

THANKSGIVING 2008

Apart from family and loved ones, this Thanksgiving my praise goes to a truly almighty God, who has carried us through thick and thin all our lives and blessed us so much with the character, ability, creativity, and contributions of others all around us.

How could we have carried on without the inspiration of others who over years kept and reported the history of our lives on planet earth, going back way before Adam and Eve and since, and worked hard over many generations to record and impart all that knowledge?

Beyond the stuff that fills libraries is the fuel of our spirit and hearts – what keeps our hearts going beyond love and support of family members – true long-lasting friendships,  music, musical theater, art in all its forms, great architecture, the genuine craft and devotion of everyday workers and laborers who develop and preserve our land, build buildings, put in drainage, water, and sewer, do all the heavy lifting as construction crews keep expanding, improving, and maintaining everything around us.

The economy has its ups and downs, but one cannot ignore the amazing onward march of improvement and development that our free society fosters. We take a lot for granted. But the human spirit, when inspired by love of God and family, properly nurtured by all of us as a community of believers in liberty, good values, prosperity, and happiness for all cannot be extinguished.

The hard work of people who keep us and our homes happy and well-functioning, are an inspiration for us all each year at Thanksgiving.

I’m currently reading a wonderful book by author Deepak Chopra titled Jesus: A Story of Enlightenment – a very different view of Christ than the biblical version, but which portrays him as a man who found his potential in his youth and became “a teacher of higher consciousness, not just a shining example of it. He told his disciples that they would do everything he could do and more. He called them ‘the light of the world,’ the same term he applied to himself. He pointed toward the Kingdom of Heaven as an eternal state of grace, not a faraway place hidden above the clouds.”

In the background is playing renowned cellist Yo-Yo-Ma’s new album, Yo-Yo Ma & Friends: Songs of Joy and Peace, a sublime collection of Christmas music with lots of strings, horns, piano, bagpipes, and voices, including the great jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, singers Diana Krall, James Taylor, Alison Kraus, and a slew of other great musicians. It’s a true musical feast for the holiday season.

Thanks be to God.

 

 

THE WARRIOR SWITCH

A personal admission: I have a warrior switch that’s in my genes, my head and heart. Boy, when someone comes at me with any kind of strong opposition, argument, disrespect, hostility of any kind, woomba, the warrior switch goes on.

My father and grandfathers were all champion racehorse jockeys. My mother’s family in Belgium also dominated racing, and she was a marvelous horsewoman who taught me well from my first pony at age three. The first time I knew about the warrior switch was when my pony, Thundercloud, at age 10, reared up and got really hyper when Mummie took me hunting for rabbits with the Cambridgeshire Harriers in January 1956, just a few months before we emigrated to Virginia.

Mummie jumped off her horse, pulled me off  Thundercloud, jumped on, grabbed the reins, kicked that pony into submission, and I saw her warrior switch was on. That pony calmed down immediately and knew who was boss. Mummie jumped off, legged me back up, and everthing went well for the rest of the harrier hunt. The hounds got a hare, and I even got “blooded” with its pad in the field where it was caught, which a taxidermist mounted for me and I have it to this day.

When the warrior switch goes on, it might be just an argument with someone. At restaurants and bars, owners don’t like arguments, so when the warrior switch goes on, I’ve been asked to leave my share of places. I don’t know what happened to the people who started the arguments. It’s usually a liberal who doesn’t like my conservative views.

I like Mel Gibson in Brave Heart, the person next to me doesn’t. He or she likes Rosie O’Donnell and all her rudeness. I don’t –- and say I believe she’s a rude, intolerant, self-hating lesbian. Woomba. The liberal goes berserk and starts calling me all sorts of names, and the warrior switch goes on, and I’m asked by the restaurant manager to leave.

This happened in my hometown of 55 years, Middleburg, Virginia, where I live, at a restaurant called the Hidden Horse. The owner, Jay Trier, is a controlling person with quite liberal views who  caters to people who spend, but a touchy-feely liberal who doesn’t like any controversy. So he didn't like the bar talk one evening and kicked me out, after some liberal started bashing George Bush and saying conservatives and Christians were idiots, and the warrior switch went on.

I told this liberal ideologue at the bar in no uncertain terms that I thought he was an idiot, and if he wanted to step out into the parking lot I would give him a face reconstruction –- at which point, Jay Trier stepped up and ordered me to leave the restaurant. Okay, but as a customer who had spent a lot of money at the restaurant over many years and did not start this argument with the guy at the bar, I told Jay to shove it where the light doesn’t shine. The warrior switch went on.

Well, Jay didn't like that, and told me to leave his restaurant and never come back. And I haven't. That was two years ago. I don't want to go back to an inhospitable place run by someone who can't forget and forgive a longtime patron who had spent a lot in his establishment. I see Jay in the local Safeway once in awhile buying stuff he needs for his kitchen, and his restaurant is on the rocks. He's not doing so well. But who wants to go to a restaurant where you’re not made welcome, and the owner boots out a good patron when a nasty person at the bar turns on your warrior switch?

I’ve always asked myself where the warrior switch came from, because even my own sister disliked me as we were growing up. I admit I was a very controlling brother. But I got that from my parents. I was the first-born son in 1944, when culturally boys were taught to be warriors because of the world war that was still under way.

We were living in Newmarket, England, and my mother –- dad called her Rusty -- drove an ambulance to pick up the dead and wounded whenever the German bombing happened and the sirens went off. Most of the German bombing was the Luftwaffe’s mistake on their way to London, but as a toddler I remember a lot of bombing, sirens, and Mummie running out to drive the ambulance and telling me she’d be back soon.

When my father returned from the war, I was already three and Valerie, my sister, was just going on one. Dad had returned to England on leave for a few days in 1945, and woomba, here came my sister.

But as we were growing up, Valerie didn’t much like me because I was a controlling, bossy brother, and my warrior switch went on any time she started telling me what to do. After we moved to America in 1956, I even shot Valerie in the butt with my bee-bee gun air rifle one day after she turned on my warrior switch.

I begged her not to tell our parents, and she got concessions from me not to do so. I knew then that Valerie was on her way to success. She didn’t like my warrior switch, but she knew how to negotiate and play her cards right, and that was another learning experience for me.

But I must admit, I’ve never found a way to control the warrior switch. Growing up, I just didn’t like my own sister or anyone else telling me what to do –- even my own father and mother. I got a lot of slappings as a child for being disrespectful to my parents, but they both understood the warrior switch and never blamed me for it. After all, it came from them and their parents and was in my genes.

I never understood, and still don’t, the animosity people have for different ideas and opinions. I’m not a big person, certainly not violent, but just a man of ideas and opinions, a career writer and newspaperman who’s worked with a diverse set of people all my life. I like people of all ideas, races, and am very social.

But there’s the warrior switch when someone takes advantage is rude, hostile, or for some reason rubs me the wrong way, even a member of my own family.

But mostly it's people in government who turn on the warrior switch, always seeming to want to soak us in some way or push their authority unnecessarily. They all have big cars with guns and telephones, so the warrior switch doesn’t help. They just say, “You’re under arrest,” story over.

I asked a psychiatrist once during an unexpected hospital stay as a lifelong healthy person whether there was some way to control the warrior switch, and she told me, “No, you were born with it. It’s part of you. Don’t worry about it.”

Then the doctor said something that affirmed me in an important way. She said, “We need warriors, just so long as they’re nice and support the values we share –- sometimes willing to fight for our rights and values. So don’t worry."

I got another pleasant affirmation this week. The cops here in my little town of Middleburg have hit me with all sorts of petty complaints and traffic citations after an unfortunate argument with my sister last January over sale of our late mother’s house, when the police actually came to the house, coaxed me outside in my pajamas, handcuffed me, and took me to jail.

Afterwards, I wrote a blog essay titled “Soviet Middleburg.” Our town police chief was displeased and took me aside to tell me so at a town council meeting last Spring. Afterwards, the town police and police chief started hitting me with a series of minor stuff from burning brush in my back yard to complaining about an expired inspection sticker on a car in my driveway.

Well, the warrior switch went on again, and I recently defended myself in court over two unnecessary police citations in the series of police harassment going back to January 2008 –- and the judge dismissed the police citations against me.

So the warrior switch worked, and there was justice when those in authority lost sight of real priorities, got lazy in their comfortable police cruisers, picking on honorable citizens for petty stuff, as they unfortunately do each day for easy money to meet their fine quotas while failing to safeguard our freedoms and economic interests against real bad guys in our communities.

There will be a further chapter in this story, thanks to the warrior switch. But you'll have to wait for the next chapter that will unfold during 2009 in several necessary court cases the warrior must bring in behalf of his own civil rights and ordinary freedoms guaranteed by our great country's Constitution.

IRAQ EXEUNT

Michael Gerson, an op-ed columnist for The Washington Post and senior fellow at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, is a marvelous thinker and writer – and his column November 21 in The Washington Post, as originally written headlined “Iraq’s Costly Success,” was right on the mark. Gerson is one of the most remarkable people today in the heady confrontational world of global ideas and politics, who served President George W. Bush as chief White House speechwriter and senior policy adviser from 2001 until June 2006, and was a member of the White House Iraq Group. He is a devoted family man, husband, father of two lovely daughters, graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois, one of the finest private Christian colleges in the United States, and before that attended a fine private Christian high school. His values are exceptional, and he has made a huge mark with his work on the global strife that has marked us not just since 9/11, 2001, but since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 45 years ago today, in Dallas, by a Castro-oriented and trained communist gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. Gerson writes plainly and precisely in his column that follows in its entirety: <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/20/AR200811200300> THE WASHINGTON POST NOVEMBER 21, 2008 PAGE A23 A FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESS IN IRAQ BY MICHAEL GERSON A war that once seemed likely to end in a panic of helicopters fleeing the American embassy now seems destined to conclude as the result of a parliamentary process. A landmark Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) -- requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by the end of June, and from Iraq itself by the end of 2011 -- is headed for a final reading in the Iraqi parliament next week. The approval of the SOFA would leave a chapter of history decorated with paradoxes. President George W. Bush -- who once called withdrawal timelines "arbitrary" and "unacceptable" -- ends his term by accepting them.

President-elect Barack Obama will inherit a more peaceful Iraq because of policies he strongly opposed. And the Iraqi government -- so often criticized by Americans as weak and ineffectual -- is now asserting its sovereignty in a decisive manner, for good or ill. The withdrawal deadlines contained in the SOFA seem like concessions from the Bush administration -- and they are. Officials are careful to point out that the June withdrawal from Iraqi cities merely codifies the current process of transferring provincial control to Iraqi forces -- and that both sides are free to renegotiate the agreement when it expires in three years. But the deadlines in the SOFA do limit the tactical flexibility of the next president in ways the current president would not have preferred. Yet President Bush can take comfort from the fact that these deadlines are only conceivable because of the success of his surge strategy -- because al-Qaeda in Iraq has been decimated and the Sunni revolt has died down. Put another way: The more successful the surge has been, the less dangerous the deadlines for withdrawal have become. And this, after all, was the whole purpose of the surge -- it was intended to be a ‘bridge strategy’ from the failures of 2005 and 2006 back to a situation where an orderly withdrawal would be possible. The SOFA also may seem like a vindication of the Obama approach to Iraq -- but it isn't. Candidate Obama proposed the withdrawal of all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008 -- a policy that would have left chaos and perhaps genocide in its wake. He stuck with a strategy of precipitous withdrawal even after the successes of the surge became evident. But the new, more responsible timetables of the SOFA became possible not because of Obama's views but in spite of them. Yet both leaders are likely to see benefit from the agreement. If a broadly based Iraqi government emerges as American troops withdraw, Bush's Iraq policy will demand and deserve a major historical reassessment. And the SOFA should allow President Obama to reinterpret his campaign pledges on Iraq in a more responsible manner -- giving deference to the best military advice during the next three years and avoiding destabilizing actions. The success of the surge has achieved some extraordinary things -- not only the possibility of peace in Iraq but also a convergence in American politics. The modified Bush and the modified Obama positions on Iraq are quite close. Both leaders have accepted a responsible, gradual withdrawal, and the possibility of leaving behind success instead of failure. Much of that success, of course, will depend on the Iraqis themselves -- particularly the leadership of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. If he acts the part of a benign nationalist, he could father a stable and unified nation. If he uses the military we have built, in the vacuum left by American withdrawal, to attack his enemies and consolidate his personal power, he could provoke another civil war with the Sunnis. Administration officials believe they have taken precautions that will encourage Iraqi nationalism over a destructive pan-Shiism. Iraqi security forces and police have been carefully integrated. Provincial elections in January will give greater influence to disenfranchised Sunnis (who foolishly boycotted the last elections). And national elections set for December of next year could act as a check on Maliki's ambitions and abuses. Dealing with the new Iraq will not be easy. It has become a prickly nation, jealous of its sovereignty and determined to avoid even the appearance of American imperialism. But this also means it is becoming a "normal," self-governing country, in the midst of a national debate on its security just six years after the end of a vicious tyranny. The cost of this success has been high for America, and some may argue it has not been worth the price. But it is still a success. <michaelgerson@cfr.org> Peter Wehner, another important aide to President Bush, who served as director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives and now is a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, applauded Gerson’s piece in his own blog on the Commentary magazine site called “Contentions.” Commentary is the foremost Jewish pro-Israel publication founded decades ago by Norman Podhoretz, father of New York Post columnist John Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and Irving Kristol, father of Weekly Standard editor and Fox News commentator William Kristol. They’re who the evangelical Christians and secular liberals call the intellectual and agit-prop spokesmen of “the Israel Lobby” in the United States. Here’s Peter Wehner’s take on Michael Gerson’s column which you can find at <http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/43961> COMMENTARY Contentions November 21, 2008 SOFA AND SUCCESS IN IRAQ BY PETER WEHNER Michael Gerson has written a noteworthy column in today’s Washington Post. Focused on the landmark Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which will be headed for a final reading in the Iraqi parliament next week, Gerson points out that the success of the so-called “surge” has paved the way for an orderly withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. While the withdrawal deadlines are not ideal, it may turn out that they are not terribly problematic, thanks to the enormous progress we’ve seen in Iraq over the last 22 months. (In addition, both sides are free to renegotiate the agreement when it expires in three years.) The SOFA, and the fractious debate in Iraq on it, is a reminder that a nation that was ruled by a dictator of almost unfathomable cruelty is now free and self-governing. A country that, a little more than five years ago, was an implacable enemy of America is now its ally. Once considered a terrorist state, Iraq is the place that gave birth to the “Anbar Awakening,” which, with the help of the United States, has decimated jihadists in the battlefield of their choosing. And Iraqis, whose future once seemed as dark as the night, now have reason to hope. It is quite an extraordinary and moving thing to witness. It is also a significant, and perhaps even a historic, achievement for the national security of the United States, for the larger struggle against Islamic militancy, and for the cause of liberation and human dignity. These achievements can still be undone; the SOFA might be voted down in parliament next week and the security and political progress that’s been made could be reversed by unwise actions. The future of Iraq increasingly rests with the people of Iraq. But that is as it ought to be. And given everything the Iraqi people have experienced in recent decades and recent years, they have acted admirably and with courage. The Iraq war itself remains unpopular in America; after stockpiles of WMD were not found and the occupation phase of the war was badly mismanaged for several years, it was inevitable that public support for it would crater and never recover. Nevertheless, a war that a few years ago appeared destined for failure is now something quite different. As Gerson writes, “A war that once seemed likely to end in a panic of helicopters fleeing the American embassy now seems destined to conclude as the result of a parliamentary process.... The cost of this success has been high for America, and some may argue it has not been worth the price. But it is still a success.” That judgment sounds contrarian and off-key today. But it is, in fact, an accurate reflection of reality. Much later than he had hoped, at a cost much higher than he expected, with far more mistakes than he ever should have allowed to happen, George W. Bush has presided over a successful war. And that is something that, in the dwindling days of his presidency, he can take sober satisfaction in. <pwehner@eppc.org>

Our valiant, capable, loyal military men and women and our civilian support teams have done their job in Iraq. We've spent a lot of treasure there. It's time for our troops to come home with honor. Bring them home, Mr. President. Iraqis now have the job of transforming their country into a great and thriving free economy with a democratic government. Please bring our fathers, mothers, sons and daughters home -- now.