Airing The Dirty Laundry

The effect of Mike Huckabee's unfortunate comment about Mormons, which has led to the ridiculous apology of "I didn't know what I was saying about his religion, I'm just a simple theology student," has been that the econo-con/fundie-con debate within the GOP has spilled out into public view, and everybody's running for cover. Today the Krauthammer lamented:

This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it's only going to get worse. I'd thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN/YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?" -- and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.

Instead, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee bent a knee and tried appeasement with various interpretations of scriptural literalism. The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive.

The bargain that conservative elites have made with the theocrats was never sustainable. But the elites always thought that they could pay some lip service and beat them back at the polls. With the rise of Huck's Army in Iowa, led in large part by Christian home-schoolers, the elites are skittish. But the truth is that the GOP is so balkanized, that Huckabee cannot possibly become a unifying figure, even in particular portions of the base. The Minutemen are in a full-blown slap-fight over Jim Gilchrist's endorsement, labeling him an opportunist. This slick video from a Huckabee detractor shows that the campaign is getting uglier and uglier. (UPDATE: it's now been removed from YouTube.)

The point is that the warts of the Republican Party are on full display for an electorate that is recoiling.

SoCal Report (Silent T)

A few things in the part of the state that gets sun which caught my eye:

• Full public financing of municipal elections will be on the agenda at tonight's Santa Monica City Council Meeting. Solidly progressive City Councilman Kevin McKeown raised this issue earlier in the year and couldn't get a second, but they ran a staff report, and both Common Cause and the League of Women Voters are pushing this hard. Just like everything else, we'll need to win the Clean Money battle from the bottom up.

• This complete crackup of the Minuteman Project is so hilariously predictable that it should be a reality show. I can't wait for the twists and turns and the backstabbing. You put a bunch of power-hungry authoritarians in the same group, who knew that they'd start fighting each other for control? Fascinatin'.

• You might want to think twice before eating in LA - the biggest produce wholesaler in the city, the 7th Street Market, was cited for multiple violations, including rat infestation. Never been, not going now.

• I wish I had the time to write the badly needed very long series of articles about the proposed LNG terminal off the coast of Malibu. This would be an environmental disaster for the coastline, yet the Governor has given tacit support to BHP Billiton to build it. This blog is a great resource for this story. Look at this part:

Environmental Protection Agency political appointees used non-existent analysis and misled the public when they reversed course and rejected tough smog rules for the proposed Cabrillo Port liquefied natural gas terminal off the Malibu coast, the chairman of the House Investigations Committee said Monday.

Rep. Henry Waxman also accused top EPA officials of refusing to hand over key documents detailing the 2005 decision by a White House political appointee to overrule regional EPA officials on a key decision about whether the Cabrillo Port proposal can go forward.

The news from Washington comes as BHP Billiton and its lobbying firm have hired another two close associates of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, to press the case behind the scenes for Cabrillo Port. That facility faces key licensing decisions next month, and could be operating on Malibu’s coastal horizon in three years.

It looks like Assemblyman Lloyd Levine has withdrawn his support for the LNG Terminal, which is key.

• New op-ed columnists at the LA Times. Surprise, there are less now than there were - cost-cutting rulez! Also, somehow, Jonah Goldberg kept his slot (then again, I actually like his op-ed today), though Arianna Huffington, Adam Hochschild, Gustavo Arellano (Ask a Mexican!) and Sandra Tsing Loh come aboard as "contributing editors," which I think means they'll write op-eds but won't be paid as staff op-ed writers.

Immigration Lies

As the Minutemen fight each other for the right to carry that proud label, somebody might want to tell them that all their premises are wrong.

Four decades' worth of Census data show that the presence of immigrants have boosted pay for native-born Californians, including for native-born high school dropouts, who would seemingly be the ones forced onto the streets by the scourge of the brown wave.

At the same time, the Immigration Policy Center released a report (h/t Courage Campaign) showing that immigrants had violent crime rates five times lower than that of their native-born counterparts. This includes men of Mexican descent, who are incarcerated at five times less of a rate than native-born Mexican men. This is a frequent lie trotted out by bigots who blame the state's prison crisis on all the brown hordes who are locked up in the jails. It's not true.

It was always pretty clear that immigrants were a convenient scapegoat for a segment of the population made insecure by the economy, or blaming their own failings on "the culture." Immigrants who work hard and play by the rules, namely most of them, contribute to the society far more than they "steal" in goods and services. We need to find a way to welcome anyone who is willing to become part of the project of America. Let them pay their fines and get in line to become citizens. And punish employers who continue to exploit them. But let's not attribute all the ills of the nation to people who are simply trying to feed their families; instead, let's give them the opportunity to do so.