The Big Three Automakers want $25 Billion. Why, with that kind of money, we could have two more months in Iraq. There are legitimate questions about whether it would be wise to direct the nation’s resources toward our manufacturing industries. However, one of them is not the executives’ mode of transportation while going to D.C.

I’ve heard about auto industry representatives arriving in D.C. via private jets 4 or 5 times in the last 12 hours or so — most of which time I was asleep, incidentally. As if this whole thing would have been averted had they flown coach. It’s like blaming the President for the financial crisis by focusing on his use of Air Force One instead of looking at his fetish for deregulation. We can be deeply stupid sometimes. But, to some extent, it’s understandable. When a problem is so big and so complex we can’t readily wrap our mind around it, the tendency is to direct our attention to something simple; even if it’s irrelevant. There’s a principle, the name of which I can’t remember, describing the tendency in corporate meetings for there to be limited discussion of complicated aspects of a project, only to have fierce battles over something stupid, like the color of the packaging.

We should be figuring out the fastest way to get average Americans working, producing, and profiting from their labor. When that happens, they have money to spend on the products of other Americans. Simple!

Lots of God/Government stuff turning up in the news the past couple of days. Perhaps the religious among you can tell me what any of this has to do with leading a spiritually fulfilling life, pleasing to whichever God rules the universe.

First, we have a guy in Southport refusing to act in an orderly fashion at a City Council meeting as a way to protest the lack of prayer to open City Council meetings. By way of protest, he started praying out loud during a moment of silence; he was asked to be quiet; he started talking louder; he was asked to leave; he refused; he was escorted out; he grabbed a chair. He was arrested. Let’s be clear, he was not arrested for praying. Had he prayed silently or been quiet when asked or left when asked, there would have been no arrest. It was his insistence on disrupting the meeting that led to his arrest.

Clergy-led prayer returns to the House of Representatives. After Speaker Bosma’s apparent endorsement of sectarian prayer as official House business, including a nice revival style, singing and clapping rendition of “Just a Little Walk with Jesus;” litigation ensued and the practice of clergy led prayer in the House stopped. Apparently it will make a comeback this session. I’m with Ken Falk and the ACLU of Indiana when he says that there is “no problem in having a minister give a nonsectarian prayer.” It does, however, seem relatively useless to me. If you are a believer, such a public display is: a) unnecessary to satisfy your spiritual needs; and/or b) so bland as to be ineffective at doing so. If you are not a believer, such a display is: a) mildly offensive; and/or b) a waste of time. If you are a narcissistic, jealous God, such a display is presumably grossly insufficient inasmuch as it could be construed as homage to those other gods of whom you are jealous. If you are not a narcissistic, jealous God, you presumably won’t care about the display one way or the other. So, to me, the only purpose I can see for these things is as a way for a certain noxious subset of nominal believers to demonstrate their supremacy over those who believe differently; in other words, mark their territory.

In other news, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles is being sued for refusing to allow a vanity plate that says “BE GODS;” this after it just won a lawsuit on appeal challenging the practice of giving away “In God We Trust Plates” while charging extra for other special interest statement plates.

A BMV policy committee reviewing personalized license plate rules in December 2007 opted to make all religious and deity references off-limits, said Dennis Rosebrough, the agency’s spokesman.

On this, I’m just glad I’m not working for them and being put in the position of defending the “In God We Trust” plates and the denial of the BE GODS” plate.

Maureen Groppe, writing for the Gannett News Service, has an article about Mike Pence’s expected rise to the Republican House Leadership. He’s apparently going to be GOP conference chairman, the number 3 slot in the leadership. This means he’ll have a greater role in developing the Republican message. But, how powerful he is or becomes depends on how well his party does. From that article, I think Pence needs to resolve some contradictions in his message:

Pence, 49, said there’s no question that Republicans face a challenging time.

“But I still believe that the governing majority of the United States embraces a strong defense, limited government and traditional moral values,” he said. “If our party can turn to both practice and articulation of those ideals, I think we will not only serve the interests of the nation, but also see the political fortunes of Republicans at every level enhanced as a result.”

So, which is it: strong defense, limited government, or traditional moral values? In particular, I don’t think “limited government” fits well with the other two. How does limited government interact with a government role in “traditional moral values” (whatever those might be, precisely)? Will there be a return to anti-sodomy laws? Or will government be limited and, therefore, allow consenting adults to do what they will so long as it doesn’t harm others?

Are we going to have limited government and low taxes? Or are we going to raise taxes to pay for a strong defense? (And, if the answer is ‘cut spending,’ what, exactly are you going to cut, and are you going to be able to sell those specific cuts as part of the GOP’s return to power?)

I’ve said before, and I still believe it, that there is an inherent tension in the GOP coalition between the social conservatives, the business conservatives, and the neo-conservatives. In this statement, Pence is trying to appeal to all three. But, if the GOP wants to retool, I think they’ll have to revise their coalition. If I was a Republican and had to pick, I’d boot the neocons first — they cost a lot, and I don’t think they bring a lot to the table. But that’s just me.

Update It occurs to me that, to the electorate, what will be more important than the internal contradictions is simply the track record of the GOP on these things. They’ve been sounding these themes for a long time now, but when they get in power, they have not put these things into practice. The social conservatives have seemingly been useful idiots to the Republicans in power. By and large, there hasn’t been a hard push for social conservative legislation while the Republicans were in power (though, I suppose they’re willing enough to make some noise while they’re in the minority.) During the Bush administration, I don’t believe we’ve seen a hard push for federal bans on gay marriage; a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion; prayer in school; or whatever else the federal government is supposed to be doing in terms of legislating morality.

As for limited government, might I just say: BWAHAHAHA. Government has grown in almost every respect except usefulness during the Bush years.

About the only folks who have gotten a lot of what they want are the neo-cons. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and the rest of the PNAC crowd got their war of aggression and occupation in Iraq in the name of “defense.” It cost a lot and did us much more harm than good. I suppose that’s why I think it would be easiest for the GOP to kick these jokers to the curb. They have baggage, they don’t contribute as much money as the business conservatives, and they don’t provide the foot soldiers like the social conservatives.

It still boggles my mind how a person can surrender their will entirely to a leader, religious or otherwise. It seems like such an abdication of personal responsibility and not a little cowardly — I guess I view it as akin to suicide. The two things, of course, merged at Jonestown 30 years ago. Robert King, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article on the anniversary of Jonestown.

King spoke with Gene and June Cordell who followed Jim Jones when he was a pastor in Indianapolis at a church on the south side, now occupied by I-65 near Keystone.

June Cordell said there was nothing spectacular that first Sunday at South Keystone — just a church of 25 people in a chapel with cracked windows. “You would have never known any reason to have thought there was anything out of the way,” June said.

The Cordells soon came to appreciate Jones’ devotion to the Bible, his food ministries for the poor, the music of his church choirs, congregations that became racially diverse and miracle healings that appeared genuine.

“The power of God was in those meetings,” Gene Cordell, now 79, remembers. “We thought he was preaching the truth at that time as we knew the truth.”

Soon they began to see something else.

In a People’s Temple bathroom, June discovered a box of chicken livers that looked amazingly like the “cancers” that Jones would pull from the mouths of sick people cured at healing services.

“I kept saying to myself to keep quiet,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to be a doubting Thomas.”

Eventually he became too demanding and eccentric for the Cordells causing them to break with Jones and his ministry. They did not follow him to northern California which ended up being a way stop for Guyana and mass suicide/murder. However, some of their extended family and 100s of others did follow him. So, apparently not that great an aberration for a person to abdicate their sense of self to another; particularly if he’s peddling salvation. Jonestown is a good reminder that ultimately, we have to think for ourselves and that others, even self-proclaimed religious leaders, don’t always have our best interests in mind.

I’ve had a lot of respect for Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) since I started following him during the days of the Communication Decency Act and CALEA and the Internet liberties stuff that was big news in the mid-90s when I hit the Internet.

As it happens, I agree with him again when it comes to what the Democrats ought to do about their Lieberman problem. Lieberman stood around while the McCain campaign was talking about how Obama “palled around with terrorists” and generally said all manner of scuzzy things about Obama. I know politics ain’t beanbag, but by the same token, politics ain’t beanbag; so Lieberman should, at a minimum lose his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Leahy said:

“I’m one who does not feel that somebody should be rewarded with a major chairmanship after doing what he did.”

“I felt some of the attacks that he was involved in against Senator Obama…went way beyond the pale,” Leahy continued. “I thought they were not fair, I thought they were not legitimate, I thought they perpetuated some of these horrible myths that were being run about Senator Obama.”

“I would feel that had I done something similar,” Leahy concluded, “that I would not be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress.”

I find Lieberman to be generally insufferable. In fact, I have a whole lot more respect for McCain than I do Lieberman. Hopefully the Democratic Senators extract some sort of price for Lieberman’s antics.

Rachel E. Scheeley, writing for Richmond’s Palladium-Item, has an article on the 30th anniversary of the massacre at Jonestown. This is of special significance for Richmond and those in the area Jim Jones grew up in the region and graduated from Richmond High School. (Go Red Devils!)

On November 18, 1978, 900 people drank the Kool-aid (literally) containing cyanide at Jonestown, Guyana, and died. Jones was a religious leader who founded the People’s Temple which eventually relocated to Guyana. The trigger for the mass suicide was the Congressional investigation by California Representative Leo Ryan who was killed by cultists at an airstrip near Jonestown.

Back at Jonestown, Jim Jones encouraged his followers to take their own lives by accepting a cyanide-laced grape drink. Syringes were used to squirt the killing agent into the mouths of babies and children. Many people participated voluntarily, while others were intimidated or, like their leader Jim Jones, shot.

It has become known as the largest mass suicide in modern history, and although it took place thousands of miles way, the tragedy continues to reverberate in Wayne and Randolph counties.

Jim Jones was born in Crete, raised in Lynn and graduated from Richmond High School. His wife, Marceline Baldwin Jones, grew up in Richmond and still has family in the area.

Seems like whenever the background of a nutjob is being investigated, you’ll come across some variant of “nice boy, didn’t talk much.” Describing the life of young Jimmy Jones, the Palladium-Item says: “Some who knew the young Jimmy saw him as quiet and fairly well-behaved, interested in religion.”

It will come as some reassurance to those in the flock of frequent commenter Rev. AJB, also a religious leader and Richmond High School graduate, that I knew him as a young man and did not find him to be particularly quiet and certainly not well-behaved. So, probably it’s safe if he were to offer you Kool-Aid. But, I’d probably stick to the beer, if given a choice. (Though, I seem to recall a Pig’s Eye Pilsner of his, I had via his brother that was pretty awful.)

I had actually meant this to be a straight blog post about Jonestown and not a gratuitous hit piece on Rev. AJB; but I guess you go where the writing takes you.

I haven’t eaten there in 15 years, but I am still happy to see that Welliver’s in Hagerstown, Indiana will remain open. Apparently rumors of its demise were circulating. The restaurant offers an epic smorgasbord, and every so often, my family would trek from Richmond to Hagerstown to feast. It was what I picked for my 16th birthday dinner (I got to drive there!) and where myself and some of my fraternity brothers went as sort of a Last Supper as we were graduating from Miami.

So, if you’re looking for a place to eat in east-central Indiana, give it a try.

Rebecca S. Green, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article entitled “Area Religion Class nets Suit.” The lawsuit concerns a program in Huntington County where elementary school kids are taken to a trailer outside of the school for religious instruction. The article doesn’t say, but the program is called “By the Book,” so my guess would be that this is Bible instruction. Kids who don’t want to (or whose parents don’t want them to) participate do not have to. Those kids stay in the classroom where they receive no school programming while the other kids are receiving the religious instruction.

To me, that last part is the key. The Supreme Court has determined that kids should be allowed to receive religious instruction off of school property during school hours if their parents want them to. In other words, as I understand it, parents who are really serious about religious instruction for their kids shouldn’t have to forgo religious education on account of mandatory attendance requirements. That’s all well and good, I suppose, for parents who are that dedicated to religion for their kids. However, stopping secular education for other kids in the public schools to accommodate these parents’ religious preferences strikes me as being beyond the pale.

The lawsuit also makes noises about school providing the religious trailer with electricity and school personnel escorting kids to the trailer, but those seem like side issues to me. The kids who are left behind shouldn’t have their instruction time reduced or their school day extended to accommodate religious instruction.

It wouldn’t matter to the federal Constitutional claim, but I wonder if IC 20-30-6-10 through 12 impose some restrictions that are not being observed by the school. Among other things, it requires that any “voluntary religious observance” be in addition to the regular school day.

I don’t have any time to do this subject justice, but the Court of Appeals has ruled that Republican Duke Bennett who won the 2007 Terre Haute mayoral election was ineligible to hold office and, therefore, his election was invalid. However, former mayor, Democrat Kevin Burke who Bennett replaced does not automatically get to be mayor because he did not win the election and voters were unaware of Bennett’s ineligibility when they cast their votes. Instead, the Court ruled that a vacancy exists, and a special election must now be conducted.

The Indiana Law Blog has more.

One bit of U.S. history that often gets neglected and which I know little about is the period between 1918-1920 when we had 8,000 soldiers in Siberia attempting to (as Robert Farley put it) strangle the Bolshevik Revolution in its cradle. We were in Siberia along with the British, French, and Japanese. A separate group of about 5,000 Americans also served concurrently in the Polar Bear Expedition in a separate, but similar effort. Both seemed to be poorly organized with unclear goals and insufficient resources resulting in a lot of soldiers struggling in the cold to no lasting effect.

William Carey has a blog entitled “In Siberia” that takes a look at the American Expeditionary Force Siberia based on the journals of his great-grandfather George C. Voegeli who took part in the effort. More confirmation to me that this Internet dealie is pretty cool.