Liberals aren’t trying to make anyone use birth control.

By Donald Kaul

The air is still thick with outrage over President Barack Obama’s attempt to require all employers to provide insurance coverage for people who desire (or need) birth control.

Catholic bishops and their fellow travelers exploded in righteous indignation over a proposal that would have required religious institutions (but not churches) to offer employees the same contraception coverage required of other, secular institutions under the Obama health plan.

The administration backed off in the face of a firestorm of protest, retreating to a compromise that would provide the insurance without requiring religious organizations to pay for it.

Even so, Republicans are still denouncing the original plan as a violation of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Constitution.

I don’t see it.

The original Obama mandate didn’t require Catholics or anyone else to use birth control. That’s a personal choice. What it did was keep institutions from denying their employees a right that’s guaranteed by law. That’s not a denial of freedom. It’s an expansion of it.

The Constitution is there to protect the rights of individuals, not the right of institutions to deny rights they find offensive.

I’ve always thought, in my cynical way, that the Catholic case against birth control was at best self-serving — a way of flooding the voting pool with Catholics — and at worst loopy.

If you really and truly believe abortion is the ultimate evil, how can you be against contraception, the great enemy of abortion?

Obama relied on the recommendation of the Institute of Medicine, an independent group of doctors and researchers, in crafting his proposal.

Birth control, the Institute stated, isn’t a mere accessory to a self-indulgent life, but a medical necessity to ensure the health and well-being of women. And it presented facts to prove this point.

About half of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, the Institute estimated, and nearly 40 percent of those end in abortion. Providing easy access to birth control could dramatically lower those numbers and save money besides.

Sounds reasonable, right?

From the reaction of the Catholic hierarchy and its friends on the reactionary right, you would have thought the White House had ordered a convent of nuns burned at the stake.

“This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency,” Mitt Romney said. He has also promised to end federal programs that provide family planning services to millions of women.

Rick Santorum would like to see birth control made illegal altogether. How’s that for keeping government out of your life?

Conservative Christian leaders and others try to make the case that religion is under siege in this country, and that liberals are attacking their rights.

Actually, it’s the other way round. Liberals aren’t trying to make anyone do anything. You want to use contraception? Fine. You don’t? That’s your right. You also have a right to an abortion if that’s what you want.

Same with gay rights. If you want to marry someone of the same sex, that’s OK with us. Nobody’s forcing you.

Despite proclamations to the contrary by conservative Christians, a majority of Americans aren’t ready to surrender their hard-won reproductive rights. The Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure found this out the hard way when it decided to stop its payments to Planned Parenthood.

The foundation was responding to pressure from anti-choice groups that oppose Planned Parenthood’s abortion services. Plans to disrupt its popular Races for the Cure and boycott sponsors were in the works. When Komen’s decision to cut off support for one of the nation’s biggest providers of breast cancer screenings for uninsured low-income women produced a swift, huge outcry and a gush of financial contributions to Planned Parenthood, the foundation reversed course.

Who’s besieging whom here?

The Constitution doesn’t merely guarantee freedom of religion. It also guarantees freedom from religion.

Romney’s “self-deportation” policy is no joke.

By Raul A. Reyes

I bet Mitt Romney has a sweatshirt that says I (heart) Florida. His victory in the Sunshine State revitalized his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. Florida also gave him an opportunity to explain his immigration policy.

Asked how he would deal with undocumented immigrants, Romney said during the Tampa debate that he believes in “self-deportation.” A crackdown on undocumented immigrants, he explained, would make “people decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here…because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here.”

Some spectators in the audience giggled at Romney’s answer. “Self-deportation,” however, is no joke. It amounts to laws that harm undocumented immigrants and Latinos. Let’s break it down and see why self-deportation defies reality, legality, and American values of dignity and human rights.

First of all, Romney’s idea of self-deportation overlooks the obvious. How do we think the estimated 11 million undocumented U.S. immigrants got here? They already “self-deported” themselves right out of their home countries in search of better lives and opportunity. And the fact is, they’re here to stay. In 2011 the Pew Center found that, despite a weak economy and increased enforcement measures, the undocumented population has remained stable. Although unauthorized entries have dropped, Pew reported that few undocumented immigrants are returning to their countries of origin.

It’s amazing that Romney, a successful businessman, doesn’t realize that if the undocumented were to leave, even gradually, it would cause our economy to contract. An exodus of this labor force would hit agriculture and the service sector very hard.

But wouldn’t American workers take these jobs? So far, it hasn’t worked out that way. In Alabama and Georgia, two states that passed strong, harsh immigration laws, farmers are facing severe labor shortages. Alabama has even considered using prisoners because farmers can’t find anyone willing to do backbreaking fieldwork.

Key components of the self-deportation strategy are state and local laws targeting “illegals.” Yet ironically, many of these laws have been found to be of questionable legality themselves. The Department of Justice has challenged many such statutes because they usurp federal authority over immigration and result in racial profiling of Hispanics. In Arizona’s Maricopa County, for instance, the department found that Latinos were up to nine times more likely to be pulled over for traffic violations than non-Hispanics. Its Civil Rights Division has received more than a thousand complaints about Alabama’s law.

Romney favors self-deportation over rounding up undocumented families and removing them from the country. Unfortunately, his solution is equally harsh and inhumane. Self-deportation means passing laws that make the daily lives of the undocumented miserable. It means measures that would bar them from finding work or renting a home and deny them basic services such as water and heat. It means questioning schoolchildren about their parents’ immigration status. These examples aren’t hypothetical. They’re all components of Alabama’s draconian immigration law.

It’s troubling that Romney endorses trampling on constitutional and human rights for the sake of winning his party’s nomination. His stance on immigration shows a lack of compassion from a man whose Mormon ancestors were persecuted across America before settling in Utah, and whose own family crossed the Mexican border a few times themselves. He would be well advised to learn from Ronald Reagan (who granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants in 1986) or even George W. Bush (who supported a path to legalization for the undocumented).

Romney might consider that his immigration stance is at odds with his faith. The Mormon Church actively promotes compassion towards all immigrants. Most of all, Romney needs to realize that Americans don’t want a long, slow purge of the undocumented. What we want is sensible, comprehensive immigration reform.

Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and columnist in New York City.

Despite the Santorum speed bump, it seems certain now that Mitt Romney will be the eventual nominee.

By Donald Kaul

Breaking news: Republicans have found their long-sought alternative to Mitt Romney.

Surprisingly, it’s Mitt Romney.

Remember the old Mitt Romney? That white-shoe Republican who was all for health care mandates? Who favored reproductive choice and who was no enemy to gay rights — that Mitt Romney?

He’s dead, a casualty of the political wars in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida.

The new Romney is a tough-talking, fire-breathing “severe conservative” who makes Rush Limbaugh look like a liberal wimp. Not only is he now against all those things he used to be for (and vice versa), he celebrated his Florida victory by announcing that he’s “not concerned about the very poor.” That’s no surprise to anyone following his campaign. But it was something of a shock to hear it said right out loud. What’s the matter? Was his hypocrisy machine broken?

To be fair, he also said he wasn’t concerned about the very rich either. They could take care of themselves, he said, resurrecting a philosophy once satirized by Anatole France. The Nobel-winning author wrote of French justice: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.”

That statement sums up those endless Republican debates.

I’ve watched politicians make fools of themselves for well over 50 years, but I’ve never seen any group of candidates engage in more vicious spats over who more lovingly embraces the muddle-headed ideas of an unthink tank like the Tea Party.

Fire government workers to create more jobs? Oh sure.

Repeal that recent landmark effort to expand access to health care? Coming right up.

Reinvade Iraq? Not a bad idea.

Deny women abortion rights, regardless of the circumstances? Check.

Increase the already bloated military budget? Bulls-eye.

Cut taxes on the very rich, reduce services for the poor, deport undocumented immigrants (and their children and grandchildren), get government out of our businesses and into our bedrooms, starve our public schools, poison our clean water, forget global warming, make our Middle East policy hostage to Israel’s most reactionary forces, put a colony on the moon…

Why not?

Each of those ideas was rolled out at one time or another by at least one leading GOP candidate, and each received respectful attention. The only exception to this enthusiastic support in the debates I watched was when Ron Paul suggested that we stop trying to win the hearts and minds of people by bombing them. That infuriated audiences and drew scornful laughter from his colleagues up on the stage with him.

You know you’re in dangerous political waters when the crazy guy in the boat is the only one who makes sense.

It seems pretty much certain now that Mitt Romney will be the eventual nominee. He all but finished off Gingrich in Florida by inundating the Newtster with an avalanche of negative ads.

Sure, he hit a speed bump in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado (Rick Santorum was the bump), but that doesn’t mean much. Minnesota once elected a professional wrestler as governor, a professional comedian occupies one of its Senate seats, and Rep. Michele Bachmann has won several elections there. Minnesotans like a good joke. Colorado and Missouri? Who knows.

Anyway, the new Mitt Romney and his allies (especially his Restoring Our Future Super PAC) spent an estimated $15.5 million on television ads in Florida, 92 percent of them negative and aimed at Gingrich. Gingrich, on the other hand, only had $3.7 million to spend.

You’d almost feel sorry for Newt, except for the fact that he pioneered the political concept that if you can’t say something nasty about someone, you shouldn’t be running for office.

I find that a grotesque perversion of the democratic process.

You ask why we don’t have better candidates? The Republican primaries provide an eloquent answer: Guys wearing white suits don’t play in sewers.

Coretta Scott King was MLK’s equal partner.

By Martha Burk

We celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in January, and now the country has moved into Black History Month. MLK left an enduring mark on our hearts and souls. But he was part of a team, and the other half of that team — his wife Coretta Scott King — made her own kind of history, with her husband and without him, both before and after his death.

Before her own death in 2006, King met many times with biographer Dr. Barbara Reynolds, one of the founding editors of USA Today and the only woman and African American on the paper’s editorial board. Of the time right after MLK’s assassination, Reynolds says this: “Most of the male civil rights leaders didn’t want to talk to me as a journalist, because they were afraid I would write something negative [about their desire to usurp King's legacy]. But Mrs. King had nothing to hide — she opened her life to me.”

Coretta Scott King was a peace activist, an advocate for children, and a champion of the poor both before her marriage and long after her husband’s tragic death in 1968. But because she was also the wife of a great man, her own participation in the civil rights movement is often minimized. She put her life on the line every day, endured taunts and threats, and narrowly escaped death when the Kings’ house was bombed while she was home alone with their baby daughter.

“What people don’t understand is that Mrs. King was in the line of fire,” says Reynolds. “She was the one who answered the phone when racist whites would call and say ‘I’m going to kill you.’ This aspect of her life is not part of her profile as a leader — but it said she could be trusted with trouble.”

After MLK’s death, Mrs. King, as she preferred to be called, traveled throughout the world speaking out on behalf of racial and economic equality, women’s and children’s rights, gay rights, and the needs of the poor.

Dr. King’s posthumous profile is much larger thanks to his wife’s tireless work preserving his memory. Through seemingly endless fundraising and advocacy, Coretta Scott King founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. It’s a memorial to the work they shared, and it houses the nation’s largest archive from the civil rights movement — an archive that exists in no small part because Coretta Scott King took notes, kept photos, and preserved documents throughout the struggle. She also spearheaded the 15-year education and lobbying campaign to establish her husband’s birthday as a national holiday, now celebrated by millions worldwide in over 100 countries.

Yet for all this, there’s no mention of Coretta Scott King at the recently dedicated memorial to Dr. King on the National Mall in Washington. “It is an outrage that Coretta is nowhere to be found,” says Reynolds. “Telling one story without the other creates a flaw and an imbalance — a scar on history.”

Coretta Scott King was far more than “the woman behind the man.” Never a mere appendage, she was an equal partner with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. throughout their lives. Her life and legacy with — and without — her husband, serve to remind us that black women make history too.

Martha Burk is a political psychologist, women’s issues expert, and director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO). Follow her on twitter at @MarthaBurk and listen to an interview she conducted with Barbara Reynolds about Coretta Scott King at http://www.prx.org/pieces/73245.

By William Cripe Sr.

With the heartache of loved ones lost in the war I am reticent to mention having to put down my dog. But I am human, he was with us for 13 years, and he was part of the family while our children went from kids with band-aid knees to adults with children; and now he’s gone.

Max was a stray, just a mutt we picked up at the local shelter. He was one of those dogs who was inexplicably low maintenance: trained (without us ever having to train him) and content to be alone for hours on end. To top it all off, one day last summer, after I had just learned of my dad’s passing, Max, himself ailing, struggled up into my lap without coaxing. I swear he knew I needed a special touch.

As one who deals with weighty life issues, heavy theologies and sticky matters of cultural wisdom, being asked about the eternal fate of one’s family pet is not one I ever gave much energy to, until Max was gone and the question was posed to me during one of my segments on talk radio.

My knowledge of Scripture couldn’t produce anything relevant except one obscure passage I recalled from the book of Ecclesiastes. It says, “…Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” (3:18-21)

While Solomon’s intent was not a dissertation on the fate of our beloved pets, it does seem to leave the door open that, perhaps, such animate objects of our love are not gone forever. I am not willing to die for the defense of such a notion, but it does have me wondering. At any rate, with the profound intricacies of the Imago Dei not withstanding, maybe my son, in his letter of condolence to my wife and me, says it all.

He wrote, “I don’t know that there are any appropriate words to say. I know you know intellectually that putting Max down was the right decision. I know that you know intellectually that all things of this earth come to an end.

“Still, it is saddening to let the ‘Dice’ go. He was a wonderful dog and companion and friend. I still remember when you both brought him home and we all sat around the kitchen table thinking up names for him (Beethoven, Sebastian were among those considered) in the end he was Max, Modice, the Dice, Motie, and a slew of other ‘pet’ names.

“Mom, Dad, you and I have discussed before my eco-theology. One thing that we’ve agreed upon is that the whole of the non-human created order, though tarnished and affected by sin, is still giving glory to God in much the same way He originally intended. I’ve no doubt that God was glorified by Max’s existence. In that there is cause for praise and fond remembrance…I won’t bore you with any ‘he’s still with us in our memories’ twaddle, but know that we’ll miss him, too.”

I do believe that once we see the Lord face to face, many, if not all of our questions will melt into irrelevance consumed by the awesome spectacle of God’s glory. But for now, though he was just a dog, I miss him, and I am sad and I think it’s okay that I am.

By Robert L. Bradley, Jr.

The world’s largest energy companies just released their fourth-quarter earnings.
Though slightly less than the previous quarter’s gains, the figures were, nonetheless, headline-grabbing. Chevron generated $5.1 billion. Shell earned $6.5 billion. ExxonMobil, the leading U.S. oil company, earned a whopping $9.4 billion.
On cue, left-leaning pundits and activists rose to condemn the industry for excess. How dare oil companies earn so much while so many people are hurting!
These accusations are hardly accurate.
Historically, when compared to other industries, big oil doesn’t actually pocket that much. In 2010, for every dollar of sales, the oil and gas industry earned just 6 cents . Across America’s manufacturing sector, the average profit earned was 8 cents from every dollar. Among pharmaceutical companies and technology firms, profit margins are typically around 20 percent.
But more fundamentally, profits represent progress. Despite what the Occupy Wall Street crowd would have you believe, the benefits from oil revenues aren’t confined to a ruling elite. They flow to millions of everyday Americans. And when the oil industry grows, so does the overall economy.
Too often, in discussions about public policy governing business, a vital question goes unasked: What exactly do profits represent?
To get a hold on the answer, think about an everyday transaction for an oil company. A customer gives the company money in exchange for gasoline and maybe some items inside the store. Why? Because these are valuable to the buyer. Fuel enables drivers to get to work and school. (And snacks are tasty!)
Drivers aren’t purchasing fuel because they’ve been coerced. They don’t have to buy from a government monopoly. Customers are genuinely gaining from the transaction (they value fuel more than money at that moment) and choosing the company because of price, convenience, and/or quality.
So, in an open economy, profits mean a firm has transformed resources into more valuable goods and services. Profits demonstrate value creation, better known as economic growth.
And, in turn, while a tiny portion of those profits go to executive bonuses, a big chunk goes toward research and development for a better future.
Already, the oil and natural gas industry supports 9.2 million American jobs. It accounts for 8 percent of GDP and is responsible for a stunning 78 percent of domestic energy production. This influx of new cash — profits — will fund new projects, which in turn will expand domestic energy production and create new jobs.
Strong profits also mean greater tax revenues. Currently, the average oil producer pays 41 percent of its net income to federal taxes — a percentage that’s much higher than virtually every other industry. All told, the oil and gas industry pays about $100 million, per day, to the U.S. Treasury!
Oil company profits drive stock prices and support dividend payments for shareholders. But it’s hardly only a bunch of tycoons who profit. It’s estimated that only 1.5 percent of energy stocks are owned by company executives. Most ownership is in mutual funds and IRAs owned by over 100 million Americans.
When policymakers demonize oil industry growth, they’re actually encouraging the industry to sit on its cash and not invest in new projects. After all, if their antagonistic rhetoric becomes policy, for example punitive tax increases or stricter exploration regulations, new projects could turn unprofitable. Firms are understandably hesitant to start new ventures when the policy environment could quickly turn sour.
And fewer new projects means fewer new jobs, depressed tax revenue, less energy innovation and, ultimately, economic slowdown. This isn’t what the majority of Americans want or expect.
The oil industry might make for an easy target for political demagoguery. But their profits really represent good news in a struggling economy – and should not become a pretext for deprecating an industry that is playing a bright, vital role in the American economy.
Robert L. Bradley Jr. is the CEO & Founder of the Institute for Energy Research and author of Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies

By Bill Wilson

Within hours of his big win in Florida, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney again raised questions about whether he is in touch with the American people, telling reporters, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”
Really?
The nation has 13 million unemployed, another 4 million who have given up on looking for work, and another 10 million who can’t find full time work.  As a matter of fact, millions of Americans are becoming poor, but Romney’s not concerned because there’s a “safety net”?
The welfare state will not even pay for a basic mortgage, as evidenced by the millions of Americans still facing foreclosure.  But even if it could somehow ever be adequate or repaired, is that really what helps people get ahead? Which is better: welfare or the dignity of a real job?
At this stage in American history, of course, Americans need jobs, not welfare.
But let’s leave that aside.  Giving Romney the benefit of the doubt, presidential candidates meet with thousands of reporters, and are bound to make some gaffes.  It’s to be expected.  Just ask Barack Obama, who was visiting 57 states on the 2008 campaign trail.
What is perhaps more important is how Romney dealt with his gaffe.
Did he talk about what it would take to create millions of jobs here? No.  At the first sign of trouble on sensitive economic issues, Romney renewed his support for automatic hikes in the minimum wage indexed to inflation, something that has never been attempted before at the federal level.
That means Romney’s first instinct was to run to the left and to pander, in this case dangling higher wages for jobs that no longer exist in this country.
It’s a plan that has been tried in a few states with no positive impact.
Perpetual hikes in the minimum wage — like everything else that raises the cost of doing business in this country — have driven businesses overseas where costs are lower.  By indexing wages to inflation, Romney would by definition raise producer costs, creating a vicious cycle of higher prices and less jobs.
Instead of leaning on supply side economics, Romney lifted a page right out of the playbook of Keynes.
About 70 percent of Republicans remain wary of a Romney candidacy nationally.  And this episode may show why.
Overall, on bailouts, the individual mandate, and the Tea Party, Romney is certainly out of touch with conservatives and libertarians who he would need to be enthused going into the general election.
But with everyone else, Romney is walking right into Obama’s class warfare trap.  He is vacillating between being insensitive to millions of Americans looking for work and pandering to them to make it looks like he “gets it”.
He doesn’t get it.  Who runs for president and doesn’t try to speak to all Americans in the first place? Why would he then play into the politics of class division by pandering? Is this how he thinks?
If so, Republicans had better figure that out soon. They’re about to nominate somebody who is ultra-sensitive to criticism from the mainstream press, and as a result, won’t stick up for taxpayers when it counts.  And he’s supposed to be the safe bet?

I’m forming my very own Super PAC.

By Donald Kaul

Newt Gingrich has a Super PAC called “Winning Our Future.” Mitt Romney’s is called “Restore Our Future.”

I know, technically Super PACs don’t belong to candidates. But only innocents like Boy Scouts and the Supreme Court believe that. In the real world, this new kind of political action committee, created in the wake of a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, is a powerful campaign weapon.

Super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations, and individuals. They then may spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against specific political candidates as they wish.

Unlike traditional PACs, Super PACs are technically prohibited from donating money directly to political candidates. In practice, they serve a specific candidate, who directs them with winks and nudges.

Gingrich’s Super PAC apparently thinks the way to win the future is to say nasty things about Mitt Romney. Romney’s Super PAC, meanwhile, is attempting to restore the future by saying nasty things about Gingrich.

It’s called free speech. If you don’t believe me, ask the aforementioned Supreme Court justices, a majority of whom don’t seem drunk. But they sure vote that way.

As a long-time practitioner of speech, free and otherwise, I see no reason for Gingrich and Romney to have all the fun. My new motto is “let a thousand Super PACs bloom.”

To that end, I’m announcing the formation of my very own Super PAC. It’s dedicated to good government, free speech, and saying nasty things about practically everybody.

I’m calling it “Destroy Our Future.”

Its main beneficiaries will, of course, be our grandchildren. You can’t be a credible candidate these days without voicing concern about leaving future generations a better world than the one we live in now — or just one with lower taxes for the rich.

Destroy Our Future will assist candidates who are dedicated to lowering taxes by doing away with schools, roads, bridges, scientific research, airports, high-speed rail, low-speed rail, public television, and libraries.

How will that help our grandchildren? They won’t have to pay upkeep on any of those things, which will be lucky because they probably won’t be making much money. What decent job needs a worker who went to a lousy school with a lousy library?

Decent jobs aren’t the only thing we’ll lack. Unions won’t be around either. Wages will be low enough for our workers to compete with China, India, and even countries where shoes are a luxury item.

Healthcare? Don’t worry. You’ll be taken care of by our world-famous healthcare industry, so long as you don’t get sick. If you do, however, I’m afraid you’ll just have to sell a kidney or something. Just don’t whine and expect government to solve all of your problems. That is so 20^th-century.

With Social Security just a memory, you’ll have to live your golden years with your kids of course, which is only fair since they lived with you until they were 35 years old.

Who among the remaining Republican presidential candidates should my Super PAC support to accomplish these lofty goals?

Looking over the cast of characters, I find an embarrassment of riches. Nearly all of them have endorsed most, if not all, of Destroy Our Future’s agenda.

Romney brings the zeal of a recent convert to the battle. Gingrich wields the well-honed skill of a political knife-fighter. No one could be more sincere than former Sen. Rick Santorum, whose views on procreation are somewhat to the right of Pope Benedict XVI, while Rep. Ron Paul is to big government what the atom bomb was to Hiroshima.

You can hardly go wrong with any of them. I urge you to send in your donations to Destroy Our Future so I can make this country safe for the 18^th century.

Naturally, my lovely wife and I will expect a small fee for administering the fund. Don’t worry, it won’t exceed the $1.6 million Newt got for those history lessons he gave Freddie Mac. Oh, and I’ll need to pay my grown kids to manage this patriotic initiative. Kids don’t come cheap.

The 1 Percent Candidate

There’s a secretive effort by mega-rich Wall Street titans to place a presidential candidate on the ballot in November.

By Peter Hart

Think big money and Wall Street have too much influence over national politics? Not to worry: A third-party presidential candidate bankrolled by hedge funds will fix all of that.

Believe it or not, that’s the pitch coming from a group called “Americans Elect.” And some of America’s top pundits are loving it. “What Amazon.com did to books, what the blogosphere did to newspapers, what the iPod did to music, what Drugstore.com did to pharmacies, Americans Elect plans to do to the two-party duopoly that has dominated American political life,” gushed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman last year. Another columnist likened the effort to the democratic uprising in Egypt, while a third cheered on the challenge to “today’s two-party tyranny.”

Sure, it’s time to shake up the two-party system. But what exactly is Americans Elect? The group is attempting to use state petition drives to win a spot on this year’s presidential ballot. But who will be its candidate? That’s apparently up to us — sort of. The candidate will be chosen through the Internet, as citizen delegates weigh in on key issues and then nominate viable, qualified candidates. Sorry, Stephen Colbert, no joke candidates allowed.

That sounds fine — but there’s a catch. The group stipulates that the candidate must be a so-called “centrist,” but if you look at the candidates the group is reportedly considering, this is just code for moderate Republican. Indeed, many of the people Americans Elect has floated as potential candidates — Jon Huntsman, Chuck Hagel, and Lamar Alexander, for example — happen to be Republicans who have failed to excite many actual Republican voters.

The Democrats whose names are floated include Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent who often votes as a Republican. According to the group’s own rules, the group can overrule the choice of the Internet delegates. That doesn’t sound much like democracy.

Who is putting up the cash to potentially run a second Republican presidential candidate? The project is “financed with some serious hedge-fund money,” Friedman explained.

Indeed. Mega-investor Peter Ackerman put up some of the substantial funds required to get the project off the ground, and his son Elliot is the group’s chief operating officer. Americans Elect isn’t revealing much about where it gets the rest of its loot, nor does it have to, thanks to the nation’s increasingly lax campaign finance rules. The group claims that such secrecy is necessary given the serious challenge they supposedly represent to the status quo.

That’s right: A secretive effort by mega-rich Wall Street titans to place a conservative presidential candidate on the ballot is a bold, game-changing act of political courage. There’s no reason why the American people should know who’s paying for it.

At least some prominent media outlets aren’t buying it. A Los Angeles Times editorial zinged the group for practicing “secrecy in the cause of openness.” But the idea that what the country really needs is for the political system to move towards the “center” has long been a fixation among influential Washington journalists.

As the argument goes, the parties have retreated to their respective corners, making compromise all but impossible. But one could just as easily arrive at a different conclusion: that from the early 1990s the Democratic Party has embraced a Clintonian style of centrist “triangulation” that has moved their party to the right. The Republicans, meanwhile, have become more and more conservative as well. The space between the parties is shifting and shrinking, not growing.

The political system does need a jolt. But the center-right agenda Americans Elect covets shouldn’t be the target for anyone seeking the middle ground.

The shady initiative’s backers promise that we’ll be hearing more from them very soon. Americans Elect may or may not be a factor in the 2012 presidential election. But don’t be surprised if it is.

Peter Hart is the activism director of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. www.fair.org

By Tom Flannery

I once heard a pastor named Fred Price in California tell of a time back in the 1970s when he and a friend visited a church in downtown Los Angeles.  They had heard that God was moving there and miracles were taking place, so they wanted to check it out for themselves.

The first thing that bothered them when they walked into the place was that the minister — who was seated amid very bright lights on what looked more like a stage than an altar — was wearing dark sunglasses.

They had never seen this so it seemed a little odd, to say the least.  Still, Price and his friend sat down and waited for the service to begin.

While they were waiting, a woman stood to her feet, raised her hands in the air and started praising Jesus — something that was quite common in the churches they had attended all their lives.  Suddenly, the minister burst out of his seat, pointed at the woman and told her to sit down and be quiet or to leave.

“We’ll have none of that here!”  he screamed.

Price and his friend gave each other a quizzical look.

Why would it be wrong to praise Jesus in a Christian church, they wondered.

They soon found out.  When the service began, the minister used Matthew 10:9-10 for his text.  In it, Jesus commissions His disciples and prepares them for the time when they will be sent into the world as His ambassadors.  He tells them not to bring along any provisions, for God will meet their needs as they travel from town to town.

“Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey,” He says.

The minister, however, twisted this to say that scrip in the original language meant Scripture and that Jesus was telling His followers to discard God’s Word.  The minister taught that his followers should therefore burn their Bibles and listen only to him for divine instruction.

Price didn’t need to hear any more.  He turned immediately to his friend and said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“I’m right behind you,” said his friend, who was already getting out of his seat.

The name of that “church” was The Peoples Temple.  The minister’s name was Jim Jones, who a few years later infamously led his cult followers to Guyana where they ended up committing mass suicide.

For the record, Jones was an avowed communist.  Yet to this day, he is described without fail as a “Christian minister,” and the Guyana tragedy is held up as a warning to anyone who would fall under the sway of any “Christian sect.”  Never mind the fact that Jones was never a Christian.

Indeed, it took Fred Price and his friend only a few minutes to figure this out the very first time they visited Jones’ “church.”

Same goes for David Koresh.  This leader of the Branch Davidian religious sect was not a Christian, but one of the many false Christs whom Jesus warned some 2,000 years ago would come into the world and “deceive many” (Matthew 24:5).

Yet from the time the Waco massacre occurred at the Branch Davidian compound, the media have repeatedly replayed footage of Koresh with a Bible in his hand teaching one of his study classes with a roomful of followers.  He is another one of those “wolves in sheep’s clothing” that Jesus warned about, who is falsely portrayed by the world as a shepherd!

Same goes for Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, who is routinely identified as a “right-wing Christian.”  His terrorist attack is still used today — nine years after he was executed for his monstrous crime — as an example of the danger posed by “Christian” militia members/groups.

Apparently, no one remembers that McVeigh was an agnostic who professed that “science is my religion” and who declared, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”  This is the kind of thing you hear all the time from Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and the rest of the New Atheists.

Although he didn’t believe in an afterlife, McVeigh said he would “adapt, improvise, and overcome” if he found something on the other side.  Good luck with that.

Recently, an NPR host countered an argument about Muslim terrorism by arguing that “Christian terrorism” was just as bad, if not worse.  The host actually cited the Columbine school massacre, which was a mass murder committed by two Darwin-loving atheists who targeted Cassie Bernall and other outspoken Christians and killed them in cold blood.

Maybe our media elites just don’t understand the basic tenets of Christianity.

Or is there something else going on here?