Big plans: DeLay's next mission is in God's hands

Disgraced congressman has a wholly holy agenda
By PETER PERL

Tom DeLay may look as though he's finished because he is quitting Congress, facing a trial on felony political corruption charges in Texas and being targeted by federal prosecutors in the Jack Abramoff scandal. But that would be dead wrong: DeLay recently told one of his pastors that God wanted him to leave Congress in part because He has bigger plans for DeLay.

That pastor, the Rev. Rick Scarborough, introduced DeLay to a Christian conference just last week, saying, "This is a man, I believe, God has appointed ... to represent righteousness in government."

So mark those words. DeLay may be leaving Congress, but he will be back with a vengeance, in a new and potentially more powerful role, because he is a ferociously determined man who believes he is on a politico-religious mission from God.

I say this as the only journalist whom the former Republican House majority leader allowed to profile him in depth during his triumphant years after the GOP took control of all three branches of American government. In an intense series of interviews at his suburban Houston home, at his church and at his office during the spring of 2001, DeLay shared with me his hope to "drive the president" to a more conservative agenda that would result in a "permanent realignment" of American politics.

DeLay spoke with a passion about his goal to make us all into one "God-centered" nation. "Our entire system is built on the Judeo-Christian ethic, but it fell apart when we started denying God. If you stand up today and acknowledge God," he said, "they will try to destroy you." Five years later, that is also the argument DeLay is deploying to portray himself as the victim of prosecutorial persecution. He is suggesting that his legal salvation is linked to the salvation of the Republican Party, of Christianity itself.

And DeLay's crusade will not be sidetracked by the acts of mortals such as states' attorneys, crooked lobbyists and disgraced former staffers who are poised to testify against him. In DeLay's world he answers only to a higher power, and his personal Armageddon has only just begun. He will artfully squeeze a load of money from the Christian Right as he makes his thunderous argument from multiple pulpits in the weeks and months ahead. The new Tom DeLay will combine aspects of the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and Lee Atwater, the late right-wing political consultant with the legendary killer instinct.

Looking back, I see DeLay as a somewhat pathetic figure. He'd started his professional life as a pest exterminator in Houston. His business eventually went under, but not before the IRS had sued him three times for not paying income and payroll taxes, and he twice lost court judgments to ex-partners who claimed he'd cheated them. From that base, he launched his unlikely political career in Sugar Land in 1978 as part of the Reagan revolution. As a professional pest-killer, DeLay came to believe that government threatened the very existence of small businesses and made a career of speaking for the little guy; he likened the Environmental Protection Agency to "the Gestapo." As a state legislator, he did little of note, except develop a reputation for partying that earned him the nickname "Hot Tub Tom."

What struck me as truly pathetic, though, was his shambles of a family life. His late father and two brothers were alcoholics; DeLay himself, when first elected to Congress in 1985, "would stay out all night drinking till the bars closed," he told me. He swore off hard liquor after he was "reborn" as a Christian, he said.
The scars of family dysfunction cut deep. When I profiled Delay, he was touting his commitment to "family values," but had ceased attending family functions and had not spoken to his mother in two years, even though she lived 10 miles from him.
DeLay dates his Christian rebirth to his alcohol-hazed first year in Congress, when he saw a video by James Dobson, the Christian family guru, on the dangers of putting career ahead of family. "I started crying because I had missed my daughter's whole childhood," he said. "It was me, me, me, me. It was golf or my business or politics that came first. It told me what a jerk I really was."

In the next 20 years, DeLay came to develop a single-minded vision of how America should be. DeLay's America would acknowledge that the Constitution was inspired by the Bible; it would promote prayer and worship, and would stop gun control, outlaw abortion, limit the rights of gays, curb contraception, end the constitutional separation of church and state, and adopt the Ten Commandments as guiding principles for public schools.

One Sunday in Sugar Land, I knelt alongside DeLay as we prayed at the First Baptist Church, then listened to the fiery preaching of DeLay's friend and minister, whose name was Rambo. I went to Bible study and the Sunday school class DeLay taught. Afterward, I told DeLay I was somewhat troubled by the idea that he essentially wanted to remold the government to meet his fundamentalist Christian worldview. I told him I thought a good many Americans would share my reaction.

He looked me squarely in the eyes and shook his head sadly at the fate of us nonbelievers. "When faced with the truth, the truth hurts. It is human nature not to face that," he said. "People hate the messenger. That's why they killed Christ."

And now, DeLay says he prayed long and hard before God made clear to him that He no longer wants DeLay to represent Texas's 22nd Congressional District. Instead, DeLay says, his God wants him to be a messenger — on a much broader scale. And we will see DeLay constantly smiling as he delivers his message because in his heart he knows that we hopeless sinners will always hate the messenger.

Perl, director of professional development for The Post, profiled Tom DeLay in The Washington Post Magazine in 2001. This article originally appeared in The Washington Post.

The New Yorker: Fact

The New Yorker: Fact: "THE IRAN PLANS
Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2006-04-17
Posted 2006-04-08

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium."

Message to White House co-pilot: Eject now

Garrison Keillor, Tribune Media Services
Published March 22, 2006

A peacock walked past the window as I ate breakfast last Saturday at an old country inn in Albuquerque, his great fan of bejeweled feathers open wide, following a peahen that was pecking around the gravel as if he didn't exist. The peacock appeared to be infatuated, shuffling around, waggling his rump, craning his bright-blue neck, the little doodads on his head bouncing around rather fetchingly, and the peahen kept scratching in the dirt, looking for grubs. Think of Elvis in a silver jumpsuit doing "One Night" at the Sands and the audience studying the dinner menu and trying to decide between the salmon and the baby ribs. Finally he got her cornered up against the window and then he stretched the great fan open to the max and he strutted and stuck out his chest and waved the tail feathers. The lady appeared interested for a while, and then she slipped past him and he deflated in about three seconds.

It was painful for a man to watch this. The peacock's great fan of iridescent blue-green beauty, when it deflates, becomes a feather duster, a street sweeper. You go from Waldemar the Magnificent to Bobo the Groundskeeper.

He reminded you of the president trying to win hearts and minds in Ohio this week, except Mr. Bush's tail feathers have been pecked practically clean by events. It was likewise painful for anyone to watch. As painful as seeing Henry Kissinger at a recent conference on Vietnam say he had no regrets. No president in your lifetime or mine has seen his fundamental competence--his ability to think clearly and manage the government--so doubted by the voting public as Mr. Bush has. This is humiliation of a rare sort.

If Mr. Bush wanted to reverse his slide, he could do it with a phone call to his vice president. Tell him, "Hey, Gunner, I'm sending over your resignation. Sign it and leave the building immediately, and don't take any floppies with you." Mr. Cheney would have a grand mal seizure right there, and be taken away to a sanitarium, and then Mr. Bush could get (1) Newt Gingrich, (2) John McCain, (3) Jeb Bush, (4) Rudolph Giuliani--take his pick. America needs a No. 2 who wouldn't give Americans a coronary if he became No. 1. The top story on the news that night is "Gunner dumped as veep," and a fresh breeze blows through Washington, and the American people perk up and imagine that the Current Occupant is in charge and able to connect the dots.

"Cheney resigns" is the headline for two days, and anonymous White House sources say that Gunner was cut loose because he was blind, deaf and demented on the subject of Iraq. The suspense of Who Will The New Prince Be? occupies us for a week. The pundits and bloggers puff and blow and when finally the new man is confirmed by the Senate and gives a ringing speech about the need to put our differences behind us and all pull together, lo and behold the Subject Has Been Changed and America is no longer standing around the coffee machine talking about what a dope the president is. Nobody uses the I-word (incompetent). We're still buzzed from the big news.

Defeat is inevitable in life, and every cock is bound to meet a hen who isn't interested, and eventually we all go shuffling off to the Old Soldiers Home and plop down in front of the TV set and doze through the shows. We're all destined to fall apart. But you don't have to do it in your 50s when everybody is looking at you. You can fall apart gently and privately. Don't go down hard like former chief executives Dennis Kozlowski or Bernie Ebbers or Kenneth Lay.

I once saw an old Hollywood star eating breakfast in a hotel dining room in Dublin. He was touring in a play that had been reviewed rather gently and compassionately, and here he was with his famous face, grinning at a couple of tourists who came over to ask him to autograph their placemat. Once he was an icon and sex symbol, and now he was 80, an old trouper enjoying his breakfast and smiling at the world. Gerry got to that place, and Jimmy and Ronnie, I think, and George H.W. and for sure Bill has gotten there. People see Bill in public, grinning, and they can't help it, they grin back.

If you want to be beloved, don't wait too long.

March for a New Christianity

CrossWalkAmerica: Are You Ready to March for a New Christianity?
On Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006, a group of people will begin in Phoenix a 2500 mile, 141 day, 5,000,000-step walk across America. Their destination is Washington, D.C., where a public celebration will be held on September 3, 2006. Their purpose is to arouse public consciousness to the misuse of Christianity in American life today. They are Christians who want to reclaim their faith from what they believe are the distortions of the 'Religious Right,' that so often appears to interpret Christianity in narrow, prejudiced and even hate-filled ways.
The organizers of this march are grieved that fundamentalism has become the dominant, sometimes the sole religious voice in the media. They seek to raise awareness to the fact that fundamentalists, in both Catholic and Protestant forms, do not by themselves define American Christianity. They are embarrassed by the present alliance of political conservatives with fundamentalist Christians, who seek to impose a sectarian and moralistic religious mentality upon our population. They are offended that negativity to homosexual persons and opposition to the century long quest by women for equality and the right to define their own life choices, are now in the public mind, the defining essence of their faith. This enterprise, known as CrossWalkAmerica, is the vehicle through which they seek to educate America.
The organizers of this march began by adopting something called "The Phoenix Affirmations," in which they state their claim to a different Christian mentality. The preamble of that declaration states: "The public face of Christianity in America today bears little connection to the historic faith of our ancestors. It represents even less our own faith as Christians, who continue to celebrate the gifts of our Creator, revealed and embodied in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Heartened by the transforming presence of Christ's Holy Spirit in our world, we find ourselves in a time and place where we will be silent no longer. We hereby mark an end to our silence by making the following affirmations: As people who are joyfully and unapologetically Christian, we pledge ourselves completely to the way of love. We work to express our love as Jesus teaches us by loving God, neighbor and self." They then go on to spell out in very specific ways what each of these kinds of love is all about.
Loving God, they say, means that people do not treat the legitimacy of their own spiritual path as a sign that every other spiritual path is somehow illegitimate. They call for a mutuality of respect for other religions that they define as paths that God has provided for humanity. Loving God also means treasuring the sacred scriptures as a source of truth but never using that conviction to close one's mind to the activity of God that leads to new truth in every generation. They say loving God means caring for God's world, including our ecosystem. It means loving things sacred and secular, Christian and non-Christian, human and non-human.
Loving your neighbor, they say, means treating all people as holy, as having been made in God's image. They do not exclude the current victims of our prejudiced humanity, believing we are to love regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, nationality, ethnicity or economic class. They say loving your neighbor means standing as Jesus did at the side of the outcast and oppressed of our world and working for peace with or without the support of others. It means preserving religious freedom as well as the Church's ability to speak prophetically to government without co-mingling Church and State. It also means facing our own shortcomings and working for what is best for all people, including those who consider us their enemies.
Loving ourselves, this document says, means basing our lives on the faith that in Christ all things are made new and all people are loved by God. Christianity therefore, cannot justify prejudice based on ignorance or fear, nor does it ever allow us to call those who oppose us 'the enemies of God.' We love ourselves, they proclaim, when we treat both our heads and our hearts as sacred, acknowledging that science and doubt are not the enemies of faith and belief, since each is a means through which the truth of God is pursued. It also means caring for the health of our own bodies and acting on the assumption that we were made with meaning and purpose, which they define as strengthening and extending God's realm of love throughout the world.
The Charter of 'CrossWalkAmerica' constitutes a stirring call to the Christians of this nation, who are open to the present and the future, to stand up and reclaim a place in America for a loving, progressive, courageous understanding of what it means to be disciples of Jesus. It finally lights a candle in this dark age of religious close-mindedness. It expresses the hope that the religious imperialism of our time, based on fear and cultivated by our politicians as a pathway to power, must be publicly challenged until it recedes from its place of domination in our national life. I welcome this new religious initiative and pledge my support to their efforts.
The powers behind both 'The Phoenix Affirmations and the walk across America are the Rev. Dr. Eric Elnes, the Senior Pastor at the Scottsdale Congregational United Church of Christ in Arizona, and a lay member of that church, Rebecca Glenn. These two, who serve as co-Presidents are joined by a band of visionaries who have worked tirelessly to bring the walk into being. Dr. Elnes, a noted biblical scholar who holds a Ph.D. from The Princeton Theological Seminary as well as his co-workers believe that a small group, totally dedicated, can dream dreams and do things that will change the world. They are convinced that the pain caused by fundamentalists has reached new levels that require the priorities of our nation to be reevaluated. They believe that the nationalism, materialism and intolerance that are encouraged or, at least, not challenged by the Religious Right have led to injustices too alarming to be ignored. They believe that the Christian Church has allowed its Lord, its language and even the word 'Christian' to be co-opted by the Religious Right, which means that these words have for many become so negative that they are thought of as evil and eminently rejectable. To counter this, Dr. Elnes says, we need a way to hold before the nation a vision of a vibrant and renewed Christianity that can call America back to tolerance, to inclusiveness and to that power of love that is the essence of this faith system. That is what CrossWalk America is designed to do.
In 'CrossWalkAmerica,' Dr. Elnes and his partners seek to call progressive Christians out of both their isolation and their bunker mentality to reclaim their places as a force for good inside this diverse and pluralistic nation. They hope this walk and its concluding rally will stop the present direction of this country that seems to be moving inexorably toward a religiously supported totalitarianism. 'CrossWalkAmerica' invites all religious people and those with no religious affiliation to join in this consciousness-raising effort.
The path of this walk will weave its way from Arizona through New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio Pennsylvania, Baltimore and finally to our nation's capital. People in each of these areas are invited to join the march for as many miles as they can. Public rallies will be held along the course of the route so that people in all areas can participate. It is the hope of the organizers that thousands will join them in walking some part of that journey and that tens of thousands will be part of the public rally in Washington.
Would you like to be involved? Would your congregation like to become one of this Walk's sponsors? If you do, the organizers provide some practical suggestions. First, speak to your priest, minister or pastor about designating one of the Sundays before Easter to present 'CrossWalkAmerica' to your congregation. Material to assist in this presentation can be found on its Website: www.CrossWalkAmerica.org. Ask your minister to preach that Sunday on the 'Three Great Loves,' God, neighbor and self as the way to raise this challenge. Churches across this land are ready for this challenge. You will be surprised at the response you will receive.
Second, join the walk yourself, all or part of it. Ask individuals in your church to support your participation or that of other walkers by pledging from one cent to $1.00 per mile. For more details about what this means and what you might do to help, again please visit that Website. The organizers, eager to expand the impact of their cause, suggest that all funds raised in this way by a local church may be divided equally between the Walk and a designated ministry of that church working on the same themes. All walkers, sponsored or not, are welcome.
Third, individual congregations are invited to join this effort by becoming official sponsors of the Walk, promoting it in local communities across America. 'Pace-Setter' and 'Companion' Congregations will be listed on their Website, allowing them to begin to embrace the idea that they are not alone in a fundamentalist sea that seems ready to engulf this nation.
If thousands of congregations answer this call, by joining this effort with both people and financial support, the results will be heard in every corner of this land. It will create the birth of hope as the people of this nation open their eyes to see and hear a new Christian voice, silent for far too long, speaking with new power, new vision and a new dedication.
Dr. James Forbes, Senior Pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City has called this march "The next great awakening" of the spirit. I join him in endorsing this initiative. Whenever the world seems to be lost in its own darkness, a light always appears in a new place. Some Phoenix Christians have now lit a candle in our darkness. If the Christians of this nation are drawn to this light in sufficient numbers, that candle will turn into a mighty flame. Then a new America will arise dedicated to a way of life in which openness, respect, love and an unfettered search for truth will come to be the new marks of an aroused and purified Christianity.
John Shelby Spong

Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man

Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man: "PARK CITY, Utah -- Has ever a little indie film faced a greater hurdle? Imagine this sales pitch: Babe, it's a movie about global warming. Starring Al Gore. Doing a slide show.

With charts.

Secret Service agents say Cheney was drunk when he shot lawyer

Secret Service agents say Cheney was drunk when he shot lawyer: "Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Dick Cheney when he shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington on a hunting outing two weeks ago say Cheney was 'clearly inebriated' at the time of the shooting.

Agents observed several members of the hunting party, including the Vice President, consuming alcohol before and during the hunting expedition, the report notes, and Cheney exhibited 'visible signs' of impairment, including slurred speech and erratic actions.
According to those who have talked with the agents and others present at the outing, Cheney was drunk when he gunned down his friend and the day-and-a-half delay in allowing Texas law enforcement officials on the ranch where the shooting occurred gave all members of the hunting party time to sober up.

We talked with a number of administration officials who are privy to inside information on the Vice President's shooting 'accident' and all admit Secret Service agents and others say they saw Cheney consume far more than the 'one beer' he claimed he drank at lunch earlier that day.

'This was a South Texas hunt,' says one White House aide. 'Of course there was drinking. There's always drinking. Lots of it.'

One agent at the scene has been placed on administrative leave and another requested reassignment this week. A memo reportedly written by one agent has been destroyed, sources said Wednesday afternoon.

Cheney has a long history of alcohol abuse, including two convictions of driving under the influence when he was younger. Doctors tell me that someone like Cheney, who is taking blood thinners because of his history of heart attacks, could get legally drunk now after consuming just one drink.

If Cheney was legally drunk at the time of the shooting, he could be guilty of a felony under Texas law and the shooting, ruled an accident by a compliant Kenedy County Sheriff, would be a prosecutable offense."

WorkingForChange-Dick Cheney goes hunting

WorkingForChange-Dick Cheney goes hunting: "Accident or not, Cheney's responsible


AUSTIN, Texas — Of course the jokes are flying all over Texas — what's the fine for shooting a lawyer? — and so forth. Dick-Cheney-shooting-Harry-Whittington is fraught, as they say, with irony. It's not as though the ground in Texas is littered with liberal Republicans. I think the vice president winged the only one we've got."