Like the spotted owl or the Pacific sea otter, Black Republicans are something of an endangered species. This week, a select group of African-American conservatives and their GOP allies showed why.

On Monday, the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) debuted ads declaring that Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan and that Martin Luther King Junior was a member of the GOP. While no evidence apparently supports the group's claim that King was a Republican, the Klan's roots in the post-Civil War Democratic south are pretty clear. What is also quite clear, however, is that since the civil rights movement of the mid-1960's, Southern racists have happily found in a new home in the Republican Party. It's no wonder that Michael Steele, the African-American Republican Senate candidate, declared the NBRA spots "insulting to Marylanders" and asked the group to stop running them in his state.

Saxby Chambliss, Steele's would-be Senate colleague from Georgia, didn't make matters any easier for black Republicans this week. During a closed door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee discussing American intelligence capabilities, Chambliss reportedly declared that the South would have won the Civil War if it had better intelligence, adding "We'd be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln." Chambliss, who defeated incumbent and triple Vietnam War amputee Max Cleland by comparing him to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, defended his longing for Southern victory by claiming that his actual words were "if General J.E.B. Stuart had had better intelligence, we'd all be meeting in Richmond right now." (Note to the NBRA: the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Stuart's fellow Confederate legend Nathan Bedford Forrest.)

Chambliss' Confederate nostalgia (widely shared among leading Republicans, by the way), is only the latest bizarre Republican linkage of the American Civil War and the war in Iraq. The Chambliss gaffe came within days of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's disturbing historical revisionism, "I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'"

And so it goes for that loneliest of politicians, the black Republican. Even as the NBRA runs its ill-conceived ads, the GOP continues to play the race card for the 2006 mid-terms. George Allen has his Macaca and Arnold Schwarzenegger his preferred "hot" mix of black and Latino blood. And while President Bush proclaims the track, the lottery and dice games the primary economic activities of African-Americans, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman confused victim and villain in the brutal hate crime killing of James Byrd.

Meanwhile, Michael Steele trails in Maryland, while Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell are getting drubbed in the gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania and Ohio, respectively. Black Republicans not only have the past wrong; their future isn't looking too bright, either.

This week's coup in Thailand highlighted once again the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality when it comes to President Bush's clarion call for the global expansion of democracy. The tanks rolled in Bangkok at virtually the same moment the President lectured the United Nations about people "from Beirut to Baghdad" making "the choice for freedom." Yet the White House was silent regarding the overthrow of the democratically elected if corrupt Thaksin government.

It's hardly the first time the global community heard crickets chirping from the Bush White House as democratic regimes were swept away on its watch.

Bush policy has been and continues to be at odds with the lofty rhetoric of democracy promotion. The American confrontation with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez stems in large part from Bush administration support for the 2002 coup that briefly removed him from power. Chavez may well be a thug and friend of Castro, but he was democratically elected, prompting 19 OAS member states to denounce the coup. But in Washington, press spokesman Ari Fleischer blamed Chavez for his overthrow and signaled tacit White House support. Following the collapse of the coup, Condi Rice could only mutter, "I hope that Hugo Chavez takes the message that his people sent him that his own policies are not working for the Venezuelan people." It is no wonder Senator Chris Dodd protested the Bush policy in Venezuela, worrying that "to stand silent while the illegal ouster of a government is occurring is deeply troubling and will have profound implications for hemispheric democracy."

American policy towards Venezuela is not the only example of the Bush team undermining democratically chosen if distasteful governments. In 2003, the United States stood by as chaos swept Haiti, ultimately forcing President Aristide from power. A popularly elected if corrupt offical, whose election was made possible by the Clinton intervention in the mid-90's, was pushed aside by the Bush team.

Turning the other cheek as democratically selected governments tumble and autocratic allies flourish gives lie to President Bush's oft-repeated admonition that:

"Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."

Democracy expansion for President Bush is a cynical political tactic and a selective one at that. As I wrote in "The Myth of the Bush Doctrine:"

President Bush, the man who as a candidate called for a "humble" America face to the world, backed into freedom as his calling. With Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, his supposed 9/11 link, his Al Qaeda partnership and all other rationales for the Iraq conflict refuted, democracy promotion was left as the ex post facto causus belli. We did not invade Iraq to promote democracy; we promote democracy because we invaded Iraq.

This week's events in Bangkok offer just one more example of the sham that is democracy promotion as a tenet of American foreign policy under George W. Bush. As I concluded in March of 2005:

The short and happy life of the Bush Doctrine, then, is one of political expediency, intellectual dishonesty, and strategic confusion. The United States will punish states providing safe haven to terrorists, except in those countries like Lebanon where we don't. The U.S. will act preemptively against gathering threats from rogue states possessing weapons of mass destruction, especially if they don't in fact have them, as in Iraq, but not when they shortly will, as in Iran and North Korea. And the U.S. will not merely protect free, democratic states as it has it the past. America will spread democracy around the globe, and end tyranny in our world, unless the world includes China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, and a host of others.

Virginia Senator George Allen has once again confirmed the wisdom of the old aphorism that when stuck in a hole, stop digging. Just days after the "Macacagate" episode highlighted Allen's neo-Confederate proclivities, his ham-handed response to revelations of his Jewish ancestry put Allen in hot water.

During his September 18 debate with Democrat Jim Webb, a bitter Allen reacted angrily to reporter Peggy Fox's question about his Jewish roots. Perhaps sensing that stories of his grandfather (and namesake) Felix' Jewish faith might alienate his conservative Christian base, Allen raged that Fox was "making aspersions."

Seeking to deflate the ballooning controversy over his angry reaction, Allen proclaimed on Tuesday:

"I was raised as a Christian and my mother was raised as a Christian. And I embrace and take great pride in every aspect of my diverse heritage, including my Lumbroso family line's Jewish heritage, which I learned about from a recent magazine article and my mother confirmed."

But just to be on the safe side, Allen had the chutzpah to reassure the religious right by joking:

"I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops."

George Allen seems perfectly comfortable in dissembling to the people of Virginia. Apparently, he does not feel the need, as the Hebrew National hot dog ad proclaims, "to answer to a higher authority."

Perrspectives has expanded its Document Library to include latest news and essential documents involving the key scandals and controversies of the Bush administration and the Republican Party.

The Abu Ghraib and Torture Scandal resources provide must-read background on the current debate over President Bush's proposed legislation to undermine the Geneva Convention. This includes former Secretary of State Colin Powell's correspondence to John McCain, as well as the letter from retired generals to the Senate Armed Services Committee, each arguing the new White House torture standards.

The Iraq WMD and Intelligence document center has also been expanded to include the first publicly available sections of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase II report on Iraq pre-war intelligence. The Phase I report is also included. In addition, the findings of the Iraq Survey Group, the Robb-Silberman Commission, the Downing Street memos and other essential documents are provided.

Meanwhile, the guilty plea of Ohio Congressman Bob Ney has one again returned attention to the Jack Abramoff affair. For more on Ney, Tom Delay, Conrad Burns, Ralph Reed and other Banana Republicans who have been or may yet be swept up in the Abramoff scandal, visit the Delay/Abramoff resources.

You can visit the Perrspectives Document Library here.

There's an old saying that a gaffe is what results when a politician inadvertently tells the truth. By that standard, then, the Republican Party must be confessing its deeply held beliefs when it comes to race. After all, despicable racial slurs like Arnold Schwarzenegger's lecture on black and Latino blood and George Allen's MacacaGate are only the latest signs that racial bigotry is not the exception in the GOP, but perhaps the rule itself.

Bush League Racism

The rot starts at the top. During his disastrous 2005 road show to sell his Social Security privatization scheme, President Bush revealed his own not-so-subtle stereotypes about African-Americans. Pitching his plan to a black audience during a January 2005 town hall meeting, Bush reassured the African-American attendees, "Another interesting idea...is a personal savings account...which can't be used to bet on the lottery, or a dice game, or the track."

In George W. Bush's defense, it can be said that racism, like charity, begins at home. It was his father George H.W. Bush, after all, who famously referred to his Mexican-American grandchildren as "the little brown ones." And it was Dubya's mother Barbara Bush who unwittingly offered the American people a glimpse into her own views on race and class while visiting with Hurricane Katrina refugees in Houston:

"Almost everyone I've talked to says we're going to move to Houston. What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

But for President Bush, casual bigotry is not merely a family affair. His closest advisors in the White House and the Republican Party seem more than comfortable trafficking in racial epithets. In his first week on the job, Fox News host turned White House Press Secretary Tony Snow reintroduced the slur "tar baby" back into the vernacular. Former Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft was a distinguished neo-con (in this case, Neo-Confederate). In 1998, Ashcroft granted a long interview to the Southern Partisan, in which he stated, "Your magazine helps set the record straight. You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

Like the President himself, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman similarly displayed a staggering lack of sensitivity and common sense while pandering to an African-American audience. During a July 2005 speech to the NAACP, he confused victim and villain in the dragging death of James Byrd, one of the worst hate crimes in recent history. Mehlman described Byrd as "a racist killer in east Texas, who the president brought to justice." Mehlman's error was sadly ironic, as it was Bush's bizarre, smirking comment about the Byrd case and hate crime legislation during his second debate with Al Gore in 2000 ("The three men who murdered James Byrd, guess what's going to happen to them? They're going to be put to death!") that so unnerved so many American voters.

Capitol Hill GOP in Black and White

The racial insensitivity at the White House pales in comparison to current Republican practice in Congress. Ironically, some of the most skilled GOP race card players are among its leading hopefuls for the Party's 2008 presidential nomination.

That discussion begins but most certainly does not end with Virginia Senator George Allen. Allen's "macaca" slur directed at opposition Webb campaign volunteer S.R. Sidarth was the latest chapter in Allen's lifelong romance with the Confederacy and the ante bellum South. Allen, who in 2005 co-sponsored a resolution apologizing for the Senate's past use of the filibuster against anti-lynching legislation in the 1920's, displayed a Confederate flag and a noose at his home. During the 1996 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a smiling Allen appeared in a photograph with the leadership of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor to the White Citizens' Councils of the Jim Crow South. While governor of Virginia, Allen declared "Confederate Heritage Month" and branded the NAACP an "extremist group." Sadly for the son of the old football coach, his ham-handed attempt to atone for MacacaGate backfired with his campaign's transparently cynical "Ethnic Day."

Allen, of course, is not the only born-again Confederate among the GOP's Congressional ranks. Mississippi Senator Trent Lott was a speaker in 1992 at an event of the Council of Conservative Citizens. Among its offerings in seething racial hatred is a "Wanted" poster of Abraham Lincoln. Lott's also offered his rebel yell in the virulently neo-Confederate Southern Partisan, where in 1984 he called the Civil War "the war of aggression." Lott's tenure as Senate Majority Leader only came to an end after he crossed the line with his 2002 tribute to legendary segregationist Strom Thurmond:

"I want to say this about my state: when Strom Thurmond ran for President, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Lott and Allen are not the Senate's only stewards of Confederate memorabilia and other symbols of bigotry. South Carolina freshman Republican GOP Jim Demint has been a staunch defender of the CSA flag, declaring during his 2004 campaign that "it should stay right where it is and I don't think the state legislature or governor should spend any more time on it." During his 1994 campaign, current Senate Majority leader Bill Frist found himself in hot water for an aide's concern over a visit to predominantly black Jackson, Tennessee, "We're getting deeper and deeper into the jungle here." And Montana Senator Conrad Burns, already facing a tough reelection fight, used a campaign event to belittle the immigration status of the "nice little Guatemalan man" who does work on the Burns' house.

Meanwhile in the House, Colorado Representative and 2008 GOP presidential aspirant Tom Tancredo has taken his anti-immigrant hard line directly to fringe hate groups. While most of the nation observed a solemn fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Tancredo used 9/11 to speak to the League of the South (LOS), a neo-Confederate hate group. (According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Tancredo may have gotten more than he bargained for, as the close of his remarks were met by "several men in confederate-themed clothing [who] stood up and bellowed the first notes of 'Dixie,' the Confederate anthem.")

Not to be left out, Tramm Hudson, the GOP hopeful in Florida's 13th district, became just another Republican race baiter to run afoul of public opinion. During a recent campaign event, the former Alabaman Hudson declared "I know from experience, that blacks are not the greatest swimmers." Unlike Katherine Harris, whose seat he seeks to fill, Hudson at least realized "I said something stupid."

States of Disgrace

Back in the states, Republican race merchants are hard at work as well.

Just weeks after Tony Snow's "tar baby" disgrace, Massachusetts Governor and GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney offered up the same term to describe Boston's Big Dig project. In so doing, Romney found himself in good company with Missouri chief executive Matt Blunt, who in 2005 ordered the flag to be flown for a day during a memorial service attended at the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site in Higginsville.

Neither Romney nor Blunt, however, can compare to their Mississippi colleague Haley Barbour. The Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and former Republican National Committee Chairman wore a lapel pin with the image of the CSA flag during his campaign and attended a Council of Conservative Citizens barbeque in 2003. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Barbour referred to the overwhelmingly African-African looters in New Orleans as "subhuman."

The Republicans' truest practitioners of plantation politics may well in Georgia. As Perrspectives previously detailed, the GOP-controlled Georgia legislature in March 2005 passed a voter identification law. Nominally aimed at countering voter fraud, the transparent aim of this virtual poll tax is to suppress the African-American vote - and Democratic prospects - in the state, especially in Atlanta. The bill's sponsor, Augusta Republican Sue Burmeister explained that when black voters in her black precincts "are not paid to vote, they don't go to the polls."

Clearly, today's Republicans have no claim to the mantle of the "Party of Lincoln." As Joe Klein described it, the race card in Karl Rove's hands is no accident, but key to the GOP strategy for the 2006 mid-term elections: "if things get really desperate, he will play the race card, as Republicans have ever since they sided against the civil rights movement in the 1960s."

The fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks and primary politics have helped to once again bring out the worst from the mouths of the right. Featuring fear-mongering, the politics of the pulpit and outright racism, here are the latest mantras from the leading lights of the Republican Party.

"I wonder if [Democrats] they're more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people."
House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), September 12, 2006.

"I know Iraq is a mess and we have screwed up seven ways from Sunday."
Senator Lindsey Graham, (R-SC), September 10, 2006.

"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."
President Bush, September 6, 2006.

"They [Cuban and Puerto Rican women] are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, (R-CA), March 3, 2006.

"I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'"
Secretary of State Condi Rice, September 4, 2006.

"I'm not going to have a philosophical debate over politics."
President Bush to Maine war widow, August 25, 2006.

"God is the one who chooses our rulers."
Florida Congresswoman and Senate candidate Katherine Harris, August 24, 2006.

On this the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Department of Defense once again organized the "Freedom Walk" 9/11 commemorative march to the Pentagon. But as I wrote last year in "9/11 and the Culture of Grief," this and other ritualistic displays of grief and remembrance reflect the new mass cultural experience of participatory mourning in the United States. And for a nation engaged in a global war with Al Qaeda, the American culture of grief is not only unseemly, it is dangerous.

For more, see the piece "9/11 and the Culture of Grief," reprinted in full below.

Despite the growing outcry over its conservative 9/11 historical fiction packaged as fact, ABC is proceeding full speed ahead with this weekend's "Path to 9/11." The contrast with CBS' 2003 capitulation over its controversial mini-series "The Reagans" could not be more stark. The only similarity is both networks' kowtowing to the pressure and the agenda of the right.

As you may recall, CBS planned to air "The Reagans" biopic in November of 2003. But the dramatization's portrayal of the Gipper as an often doddering and occasionally mean-spirited ideologue drew howls from the right. Conservatives objected to James Brolin's Reagan showing complete disdain over the plight of AIDS victims by uttering the line, "they that live in sin shall die in sin." (Reagan's actual record on AIDS was, of course, abysmal, as Perrspectives previously detailed.) Among other CBS deviations from conservative Reagan hagiography was its depiction of Nancy Reagan as running the White House, the early onset of Dutch's Alzheimers, and the Reagan family dysfunction.

Ulimately, the firestorm of criticism from the right led CBS president Les Moonves to fold like a cheap card table. The mini-series was relegated to the obscurity of Showtime. Still, the flow of conservative venom was uninterrupted. L.Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center claimed, "This was a left-wing smear of one of the nation's most beloved presidents and CBS got caught." Bozell added that "There is no such thing as creative license to invent falsehoods about people." While RNC chairman Ed Gillespie had insisted on the inclusion of a disclaimer with the film, Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) proclaimed, "This reminds us all that the American people have a strong voice in deciding what is fair and appropriate."

Fast forward three years to ABC and its plan to air a right-wing 9/11 fantasy just in time for the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks and the run-up to the mid-term elections. Far from voicing concern over the certain damage to political discourse and the permanent historical record posed by "The Path to 9/11," ABC and its new conservative friends have engaged in a marketing campaign targeting the right's true believers reminiscent of Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ."

Ultimately, the common lesson of "The Reagans" and "The Path to 9/11" is this: ABC like CBS before it is doing the bidding of the conservative propaganda machine.

With this weekend's upcoming mockumentary "The Path to 9/11," Disney and ABC are breaking dangerous new ground in the conservative propaganda war. Even as the ABC network follows in the footsteps of Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ in "mobilizing the base," ABC News on Sunday declared Robert Greenwald's new documentary "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" a left-wing hatchet job "produced like a political campaign."

A pre-election salvo designed to pin the blame for the September 11 attacks on Bill Clinton and the Democrats, the "Path to 9/11" is right-wing revisionist history packaged as fact. Laughably billed as "based on the 9/11 Commission report", ABC's "Path" is the work of conservative activist Cyrus Nowrasteh. Nowrasteh, who Rush Limbaugh deemed "a friend of mine," was featured in a panel in 2005 titled "How Conservatives Can Lead Hollywood's Next Paradigm Shift."

According to early reports, the distortions, smears and inventions in "The Path to 9/11" are legion. "The Path" features a CIA agent blaming the Washington Post for revealing that the U.S. was intercepting Bin Laden's calls, when the disclosure actually came from reliable conservative mouthpiece, the Washington Times. A critical scene showing Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger blocking a 1998 CIA assault on Osama Bin Laden is made up out of whole cloth. Berger labeled Nowrasteh's fiction "a total fabrication. It did not happen." He was seconded by Richard Clarke, former counterrorism chief for Presidents Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, confirmed this scene never happened and was completely made up. As ThinkProgress documents, the 9/11 Commission Report on page 199 sets the record straight, noting that CIA Director George Tenet had the green light from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden.

To promote its 9/11 fantasy just in time for the fifth anniversary of the attacks, ABC and the producers of the docudrama are taking a cue from Mel Gibson and the launch of Passion of the Christ. Just as with the Passion, the true-believer market is being seeded, while skeptics are being kept at bay. Conservative bloggers are receiving pre-release DVDs in advance of this weekend's screening on the mini-series, while progressive bloggers are banned from participating in conference calls regarding the film. (ABC briefly took down the film's blog, only to see it return after two days of withering criticism.) Copies of the film are being sent to 100,000 teachers nationwide as well as to schools in the UK and India, complete with cover letter from Republican 9/11 commission chairman Tom Keane. (Keane's son just happens to be running for Senate in New Jersey against Democratic incumbent Bob Menendez.) In comparison, Sinclair's 2004 election eve Swift Boat faux documentary smearing John Kerry seems like small potatoes.

While ABC is complicit in doing the bidding of the conservative propaganda machine, ABC News has maintained a seeming vow of silence. Instead, ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson focused its venom on the new "Iraq for Sale" documentary from "Outfoxed" producer Robert Greenwald. Without investigating the allegations of contractor fraud and profiteering detailed in the film, ABC's Dan Harris suggested Greenwald's documentary was purely partisan:

Critics of these kinds of documentaries remind viewers not to expect balance from left-leaning documentaries, such as Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and former Vice President Al Gore's global warming film, "An Inconvenient Truth."

"Finally, the left has figured out their answer to talk radio - and it's documentaries," said Prof. Richard Lichter of George Mason University.

"Iraq for Sale" was produced more like a political campaign than a traditional movie, largely funded by 3,000 small donations made on the Internet.

This weekend, all of America will be watching as ABC becomes a de facto appendage of the Republican Party. Everyone, that is, except ABC News.

With the arrest of fugitive polygamist Warren Jeffs, conservatives have once again returned to one of their favorite lines of attack against same-sex marriage rights. As Tucker Carlson put it during his September 1st MSNBC show, "I'm merely asking the obvious question, why not get rid of the discrimination against polygamists too?"

Call it the right's "Marriage Slippery Slope" argument. For proponents such as Carlson, Senator Rick Santorum ("man-on-dog"), Senator John Cornyn ("man on box turtle") and columnist Charles Krauthammer, gay marriage opens a logical Pandora's Box of unnatural marital arrangements involving incest, bestiality, multiple partners and virtually any other horror the conservative mind can conjure up.

As I wrote back in March following the debut of HBO's polygamy romp, "Big Love" (which was loosely based on Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), the culture warriors as usual have it completely wrong.

For example, in his March 17th column "Pandora and Polygamy," Krauthammer makes the predictably simplistic - and misguided - argument that recognition of marriage for gay couples inevitably entails state sanctioned polygamy.

It is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement -- the number restriction (two and only two) -- is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

This line of argument makes gay activists furious. I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I'm not the one who put them there. Their argument does.

No, it doesn't. Same-sex marriage advocates merely argue that the state should recognize the loving relationships that free, autonomous and equal individuals choose to enter into and maintain. And that's where the analogy of gay marriage to polygamy ends.

By definition, polygamy institutionalizes a state of inequality between the spouses engaged in it. Whether involving multiple wives or husbands, the practice enshrines marital disadvantage in family standing, in livelihood, and in, well, consortium. Since the end of the Civil War at least, the United States has not looked kindly on involuntary servitude and has forbid individuals to enter (even freely) contracts that will abridge their freedom and equality in the future. Men and women are not free to be unfree. As John Stuart Mill famously put it, "The principle of freedom cannot require that he should be free not to be free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to alienate his freedom."

In the United States, governments will similarly not condone contractual relationships that may stem from or result in coercion of one or more of the parties, or that may create health risks for the individuals or society at large. That's why the comical pronouncements regarding the slippery slope from same-sex marriage to polygamy, incest and bestiality by United States Senators including Rick Santorum ("man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be") and John Cornyn ("Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife") were so roundly - and rightly - maligned.

So the growing call for same-sex marriage rights will not, should not and logically does not lead to the legalization of polygamy in the United States. But that won't stop conservative culture crusaders from Warren Jeffs and the specter of legalized polygamy as a big stick in their war against gay Americans.

Despite grandiose claims from the White House regarding the strength of the U.S. economy, a flood of new data helps explain Americans' continued feelings of insecurity. While the unemployment rate (4.7%), GDP growth (2.9%) and productivity gains (2.3%)look impressive, below the surface the picture for wages and income grows bleaker still. Whether the incumbent Republicans pay a price in November for that dismal performance remains to seen.

The disturbing trends for Americans' incomes are beyond dispute. Since President Bush took office, median incomes have dropped 5.9%. That translates to working age Americans seeing their median income drop by $275 over the past year. And while a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau showed the Bush economy finally produced gains in median household income in 2005 (up 1.1% to $46,326), the improvement masked the continued downward trend for full-time workers. Falling incomes were offset only by more family members entering the workforce. USA Today summarized the foreboding meaning of the statistics:

Earnings actually fell for people working full-time. Household income rose because more people worked in the households, albeit at lower paying jobs. Median earnings of men declined 1.8% last year. For women, the decline was 1.3%.

The wage and income landscape is especially rocky for new entrants to the labor market. An analysis of Labor Department figures by the Economic Policy Institute showed that entry-level wages for high school and college graduates tumbled 4% between 2001 and 2005. The findings mirrored the Census Bureau conclusions, which revealed "median income for families with at least one parent age 25 to 34 fell $3,009 from 2000 to 2005, sliding to $48,405, a 5.9 percent drop, after having jumped 12 percent in the late 1990's."

Perhaps most alarming is the disconnect between productivity gains and wage growth in the American economy. Unlike past economic recoveries, workers have lost ground after inflation, as wages and incomes badly trailed the improvements in output. While productivity has grown at 2.4% over the past 12 months, real median hourly wages declined 2% since 2003. It's no wonder American workforce participation has remained stagnant.

Clearly, American workers did not reap the benefits of strong U.S. productivity. It is no mystery who did. As the New York Times put it:

Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960's. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as "the golden era of profitability."

Making matters worse for American workers is the uninterrupted health care crisis. The August 2006 Census Bureau report noted that the ranks of the uninsured swelled to 46.6 million in 2005 from 45.3 million one year before, a 2.9% increase. Health insurance premiums jumped by 9.2%, triple the overall rate of inflation.

As Perrspectives detailed in December, stagnant incomes and skyrocketing health care costs are just two components of an "Insecurity Index" that explains Americans' ongoing economic discomfort. With soaring energy prices, mounting personal debt and high-profile mass layoffs, these factors undermine Americans' standard of living and reinforce the precariousness of their consumption-driven lifestyles.

None of which means President Bush and the Republican Party will pay a political price this fall. But like American workers, they shouldn't expect a windfall any time soon.

The Avenging Angel, punisher of miscreants of the conservative ascendancy, offered yet more retribution this week in response to the latest Republican buffoonery.

The fun and frolic began with Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens. The Republican porkmeister suffered a double-dose of humiliation just in time for Labor Day. Just days after it was revealed that Stevens was the "Secret Senator" who put a hold on a public database for federal grants and earmarks to contractors, the FBI pursuing corruption tied to oil interests raided the offices of Alaskan Republicans, including Stevens' son Ben. Stevens is concerned about the cost of the database, the Angels nods, in much the same way that the Internet is "a series of tubes."

Meanwhile, President Bush's one-time Minister of Disinformation at PBS Kenneth Tomlinson suffered another devastating blow this week. In November, Tomlinson cut short his effort to steer Big Bird to the right after a damning report showed ethics violations in hiring and recruiting. Now, new revelations claim Tomlinson as chairman of the board that oversees the Voice of America put friends on the payroll and funding a "horse racing operation" with government dollars. Perhaps, the Angel muses, that's what conservatives mean when they talk about privatizing public broadcasting.