KK Tells us why her church is cool

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Tonight at St. Agnes Catholic Church in St. Paul, 60 singers will assemble in the choir loft for midnight mass. Violinists, oboists and trumpeters -- many from the Minnesota Orchestra -- will tune their instruments.

Then, as Christmas arrives at the stroke of midnight, the glorious strains of Mozart's monumental Coronation Mass will rise in the baroque splendor of this onion-domed, gilt-and-marble church in Frogtown, as bells peal in the frosty air.

Worshipers and visitors will have to pinch themselves to remember they're in Minnesota, and not in a cathedral in Vienna or Munich.

A chance to hear the Coronation Mass -- among the grandest music ever written -- would seem a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to many Minnesotans.

In fact, the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale performs classical-era masses of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and others at St. Agnes at 10 a.m. almost every Sunday from October until June.

Though the music is magnificent in the concert hall, says director Robert Peterson, it's different and more meaningful in the context of the Latin mass. There, it's performed to give glory to God -- just as its composers intended it to be.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would surely be astounded to learn that, in 2010, St. Paul, Minn., is one of the last places on earth where music lovers can still experience his music this way.

"A handful of European churches perform these masses in a worship service on rare occasion," says Peterson. "But we do 30 of them a year."

"If music is supposed to lift up your soul, to give you a glimpse of heaven, this music will do that," says parishioner Keith Kostuch, who was incredulous to discover St. Agnes' cultural treasure when his family moved here recently.

"When the chorale, the organ and the orchestra power in on some of the numbers, it's chilling -- you just get goosebumps. I've seen visitors weep. They're moved and enthralled -- overwhelmed, really."

The chorale's singers, all talented amateurs, range from a gifted high school student to a senior medical doctor. Some members actually moved to the Twin Cities to join, says Peterson. The vocal soloists and instrumentalists are top-rank professionals.

Peterson became the chorale's director in 2005, when its founder, the Rev. Richard Schuler, retired. Schuler was a distinguished organist and musicologist, as well as St. Agnes' longtime pastor.

He launched the chorale in 1974, after he and the church choir returned from a European singing tour determined to reproduce the orchestra-accompanied Latin masses they had heard in famous churches there.

Peterson, who conducted choirs at Edina High School and Macalester College for decades, was bowled over when he first heard the Chorale in 1999.

"I was used to having three months to rehearse my choirs to perform a work of this scope. I couldn't imagine preparing a major work in one week, then putting down my baton to get ready for another the next week, and so on for 30 Sundays."

St. Agnes is the perfect setting for what one chorale fan calls "the greatest hits of Western civilization."

The church building, begun in 1909, was lovingly constructed by Austro-Hungarian immigrants who came to work on the railroad and lived in Frogtown, close to the tracks.

They modeled the church on Kloster Schlaegel, a monastery near Aigen, Austria. It's filled with old-world beauty and craftsmanship: a gorgeous marble altar, Tyrolean statues, and Stations of the Cross in German.

The experience of perfectly harmonized art, architecture and music can transport visitors.

"It's like taking your music history textbook and opening it about the years 1750 to 1800 -- the height of the classical era," explains Peterson.

"Everything is integrated. There's Latin in the choir loft and on the altar, and reverent rituals that have been part of the church for centuries: candles, bells, incense, vestments and altar servers, and the ninth-century Gregorian chant of the 'Schola Cantorum' which sings the 'proper,' or parts of the mass that change daily.

"It all comes together to help people appreciate this great mystery," Peterson concludes.

Both Catholics and non-Catholics can appreciate the results. The chorale includes Catholic and non-Catholic members, and the church has greeters who help people unfamiliar with the Latin liturgy to feel at home.

No work provokes more emotion than the great "Mass in E Minor" by Heinrich von Herzogenberg. This huge work, composed in 1894, was once presumed lost, but a complete score turned up in the mid-1990s.

Performed by more than 100 musicians, the music almost lifts listeners out of their pews. The chorale is the first to perform it in North America.

"People today have a real thirst for the transcendent," says the Rev. John Ubel, St. Agnes' current pastor. "I believe the way in which we celebrate the Eucharist here speaks to that."

But each Sunday's performance costs several thousand dollars. The chorale is primarily supported by donations to its nonprofit, and may die unless new donors are found.

Tonight, the chorale will give its only real concert of the year. At 11:15, before midnight mass, it will perform traditional carols you'd likely hear in a church in Bavaria.

"When I conduct the chorale, I feel a real connection with God," says Peterson. "When I finish the last 'Dona Nobis Pacem,' I feel a sense of peace and completeness. The music helps me to pray in a different way. I hope it's the same for others, and that they are brought closer to God by this great music."

"As Monsignor Schuler always said, 'To sing in church is to pray twice.'"

KK tells us what's wrong with marriage ..

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The growing "marriage gap" is one of our nation's most important and troubling trends. For Americans with college degrees (30 percent of the population), marriage -- our bedrock social institution -- is stable and getting stronger. But for the moderately educated (the 58 percent with a high school but not a college diploma), it's in precipitous decline. In fact, the family life of America's once-great middle class is quickly becoming almost as fragile as that of our poorest citizens -- the 12 percent who are high school dropouts.

The disturbing details are in a new study -- "When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America" -- by the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values. The conclusion is stark: "The United States is devolving into a separate-and-unequal family regime, where the highly educated and affluent enjoy strong and stable households and everyone else is consigned to increasingly unstable, unhappy, and unworkable ones."

Only 11 percent of college-educated Americans now divorce or separate in the first ten years of marriage, while 37 percent of their high school-educated peers do. Sixty-nine percent of highly educated married adults report a "very happy" marriage, while only 57 percent of the moderately educated and 52 percent of the least educated say the same. The gap on non-marital child-bearing is jaw-dropping: Only 6 percent of college-educated mothers' babies are born out-of-wedlock, while it's 44 percent for moderately educated mothers and 54 percent for high school dropouts. In the 1980s, those figures were 2 percent, 13 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

What explains this?

Americans of all backgrounds still agree on the value of marriage -- roughly 75 percent say "being married" is very important to them. But the meaning of marriage has changed dramatically in the last 40 years, according to the authors. A new model has greatly raised the bar, both emotional and financial, on what it takes to get and stay married.

In the past, our society adhered to the "institutional" model of marriage. This model seeks to "integrate sex, parenthood, economic cooperation, and emotional intimacy" into the sort of "good-enough" marriage that our grandparents expected -- and which most of us can still attain. Today, however, that model is being displaced by a yuppie-style "soul mate" model, which sees marriage primarily as a "couple-centered vehicle for personal growth, emotional intimacy, and shared consumption that depends for its survival" on happiness and constant self-fulfillment.

Many college-educated Americans are well-equipped to achieve a soul-mate-type marriage. They generally plan their lives using what the report calls the "success sequence:" a focus first on education and work, then on marriage, followed by child-bearing. This requires developing such virtues as delay of gratification and hard work. It also minimizes such stresses as out-of-wedlock birth, and maximizes financial resources that can be used for self-fulfillment.

But a "soul mate" marriage is beyond the reach of a growing number of moderately educated and poor adults. Today, these Americans tend to have more sexual partners, substance abuse, infidelity and unplanned pregnancies than do their college-educated peers, according to the report. Men in particular tend to embrace a "live-for-the-moment" ethic, and to have "long periods of idleness." This is hardly a recipe for marital success.

Moderately educated Americans are also disengaging from institutions of work and civil society to a much greater degree than are those with college degrees. In the last 40 years, high school-educated men have become significantly more likely than college-educated men to experience bouts of unemployment, the report says. At the same time, the moderately educated are abandoning churches, Lions Clubs and VFW groups that supported their grandparents' "institutional" marriages, and that teach "the habits of the heart" that sustain strong marriages.

Americans increasingly see marriage not as the gateway to adulthood but as a "capstone" that "signals couples have arrived, both financially and emotionally," according to the report.

The marriage gap is bad news for all. Young people without married parents are at risk for a host of social pathologies. Single mothers are more likely to live in poverty, while single men risk detachment from their children and from what the report calls the "civilizing power" of marriage.

If marriage becomes "a luxury good," in the report's words, consequences will be severe. This fundamental social institution "has long served the American experiment in democracy as an engine of the American Dream, a seedbed of virtue for children, and one of the few sources of social solidarity in a nation that otherwise prizes individual liberty.""

KK Tells us what liberty and freedom really are

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In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed a constitutional right to abortion in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. A heated national debate about the court's conclusion followed. But fewer Americans -- on both sides of the abortion divide -- took issue with the court's now-famous articulation of the meaning of liberty.

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life," wrote a three-justice plurality. Liberty, in other words, is first and foremost about personal autonomy. What's important is not so much the way we live and the ends we pursue, but the fact that these reflect our free choice, and authentically express "who we are."

Today, the idea of freedom as self-fulfillment is pervasive in American society. If you ask almost any parent what he or she wants most for a child, you'll hear it confirmed: "I just want her to be happy."

But though it may now seem self-evidently correct, this view of liberty is in fact of recent vintage. Its advent in American political life can be pinpointed to a particular leader -- no, not President Obama or his immediate predecessors. We have to go back to 1912, and Woodrow Wilson.

Lawyer and author Joshua D. Hawley tells the story in an essay entitled "America's Epicurean Liberalism" in the journal National Affairs. Hawley named what he calls America's "reigning creed" after Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher who taught that individual happiness is the goal of living, and that pleasure is the measure of happiness.

According to Hawley, "epicurean liberalism" came to the fore in 1912 -- the peak of the Progressive era, and the year when Woodrow Wilson successfully battled Theodore Roosevelt for the White House. Wilson believed that the American Founders' vision of democracy was outdated and had to be changed.

In the Founders' view, liberty meant being free from the arbitrary rule of others, so one could rule himself and order his own life to gain the fruits of his labor. But individual freedom was only possible, the Founders believed, in a political regime of ordered liberty, with the rule of law, checks and balances on power, and a widely shared vision of the common good. A free government of this kind requires citizens of a certain character -- self-reliant, self-disciplined and public-spirited.

Wilson rejected the Founders' idea of liberty, which he believed was based on the out-moded agrarian ideal of the yeoman farmer. In an urban, industrial age, he believed, the threat to individual freedom came from the impersonal forces of big business and big government.

In redefining freedom for the modern age, Wilson took a cue from the rise of psychology: The individual must decide for himself what the good life is, he said. Liberty was no longer to be conceived of as the freedom to govern yourself and all your passions, but the freedom to discover and develop yourself and follow your passions. Self-fulfillment became a right -- the highest right -- and the role of government became to encourage individual flourishing by removing constraints on individual choices.

Wilson's idea of liberty spread rapidly, well beyond politics. Hawley traces it through philosopher John Dewey and Franklin D. Roosevelt to the present day -- culminating in the Supreme Court's "mystery of human life" statement.

But in 2010, it's clear that Wilson's "progressive" vision -- with individual choice as the measure of freedom -- has brought both serious social dysfunction and much personal unhappiness. When we behave as if our own pleasure is the highest good, we ignore the fact that our personal choices have consequences for the larger society, and thus for the conditions in which our freedom is grounded. The consequences of "following our bliss" range from the breakdown of the family to social ills such as drug abuse and pornography to malfeasance on Wall Street. As civil society erodes, a large and increasingly intrusive government picks up the pieces.

If the trajectory of epicurean liberalism continues, our democracy will be undermined. But there is an alternative way to think about freedom, and it could yet win the day. Hawley calls it freedom conceived, not as "self-development," but as "self-determination."

Self-determination requires, first and foremost, that citizens think -- not only of their own desires -- but of their obligations to one another. It requires "not just freedom from coercion for the individual," but "personal discipline, planning and hard work from the individual," says Hawley. Only by exercising these virtues can a citizen begin to control his own life, and thus be fit to help rule the community.

Self-development "is a blind alley," Hawley concludes. "Whatever judges may say, none of us can define our own universe. And a public philosophy that fails to help us live well ... is not a means to liberty -- it is a delusion.""

KK calls Democrats whiners

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Since Nov. 2, we've heard lots of grumbling from Minnesota Democrats. In a year of unprecedented GOP gains across America, they're not satisfied that their candidates won every statewide office in our state (subject to a recount in the governor's race).

DFLers, it seems, are sore that they didn't win the Minnesota House and Senate as well -- completing their sweep. They don't seem to grasp that the tide that washed through the Minnesota Legislature was a nationwide phenomenon, as voters shouted "enough" to a Democrat-led glut of taxes, spending and deficits. Today, Republicans hold more legislative seats across the country than at any time since 1928.

DFLers should be counting their blessings. Instead, from their blinkered perspective, the GOP's capture of the Minnesota Legislature appears aberrant and dreadful. And they've found a bogeyman to blame: Minnesota businesses. Their gripe seems twofold. First, business, through independent groups like the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses, spent too much -- i.e., "bought and paid for" the Legislature. And, second, business groups unconscionably exploited voters with negative advertising.

We hear this so much that the reality comes as a surprise: Minnesota Democrats and their allies actually outspent Republicans and their allies in 2010 roughly 2 to 1, though final totals won't be known for some time.

The Senate DFL caucus raised four times more than the Senate GOP caucus, and the House DFL caucus raised two times more than its GOP counterpart. The DFL state party raised over three times more than the state GOP. Mark Dayton raised more than one and a half times what Tom Emmer did.

Business promoted a pro-jobs agenda of more streamlined government, lower taxes and more controlled spending. Voters resonated to this message in an age when capital is highly mobile, and you can work as easily from South Dakota, Mumbai or Beijing if you have Internet access and a smart phone.

Without business' involvement, Minnesota's electoral field would largely have been left to Democrats and their biggest donors: public employee unions such as Education Minnesota, AFSCME and SEIU, and Indian tribes with big-bucks casino interests.

All political contributions have an element of self-interest. But we all benefit from a healthy business climate. More jobs mean more prosperity, more families with good health insurance, more kids in our schools.

But the interests of public employee unions and tribes don't parallel voters' interests. These groups are monopolies, intent on electing legislators who will lock in their monopoly benefits. Unions donate huge sums to elect their own bosses, expecting them to increase benefits and hire more public employees to keep union donations flowing.

DFLers' second complaint is that business groups relied on below-the-belt negative advertising. This rings hollow. In 2010, the left threw the first and dirtiest mud ball.

On July 6, Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM) -- an independent, DFL-allied group funded primarily by public unions and Dayton's family -- launched what was probably the earliest attack ad in Minnesota campaign history, targeting Tom Emmer more than a month before the DFL even had a gubernatorial candidate.

Factcheck.org, a project of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center, labeled the first ABM ad's claims about Emmer "false" and "pure nonsense." A second ad used a mother's grief about her son's death at the hands of a drunk driver to focus on Emmer's decades-old DWIs. You can be sure ABM didn't mention that its own favorite candidate -- Mark Dayton -- is a recovering alcoholic who has acknowledged temporarily returning to drink sometime after February 2005 while representing Minnesota in the U.S. Senate.

Thanks to ABM's early funding edge, its anti-Emmer ads ran 2,400 times before the Aug. 10 primary, while the one pro-Emmer ad that ran appeared just 330 times, according to the Campaign Media Analysis group.

Every ad that ABM ran -- with its $5 million-plus budget -- was negative. ABM's parent organization, ProgressNow, prides itself on taking negativity to new lows. Yet when Republicans use negative mailers that focus on DFL candidates' records, Democrats moan about our negative electoral climate.

If business "bought" Minnesota's new legislative majorities, does that mean the unions bought our Legislature in previous years? Democrats' outrage seems to betray a sense of entitlement to power. Instead of fuming, they might better reflect on whether such arrogance is one reason that voters around the country drummed them out of"

KK tells us how schools should be run .. with a single source

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Last summer, Money magazine named Eden Prairie as the "best small city" in America. It highlighted the Twin Cities suburb's "top-notch" schools as a primary reason the thriving community is "great for raising a family."

But the days of Eden Prairie's pride in its schools may be numbered. School officials have announced a plan to abandon the district's neighborhood-schools model and to bus hundreds of elementary students across town to balance schools on the basis of income. Parents are up in arms about the plan -- scheduled for a decision in December -- but officials insist the upheaval will be justified. The economic diversity that results, they promise, will improve the academic achievement of low-income, minority children.

Have we learned nothing? From the 1970s to the 1990s, America conducted a massive social-engineering experiment in race-based busing that was expected to improve the academic achievement of low-income, minority children. The experiment failed virtually everywhere it was tried -- from Boston to St. Louis, Kansas City to San Francisco. Busing for "desegregation" had little, if any, reliable effect on minority achievement. It did, however, wrench neighborhoods apart, create insurmountable obstacles to parental involvement, cost vast sums and send middle-class families fleeing to the suburbs.

Eden Prairie need look no farther than Minneapolis to see where forced busing can lead. The city bused students for racial balance for more than 20 years, but black achievement hardly budged. In 1996, a fed-up Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton called for an end to the practice.

Income-based busing is the new rage, because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled busing for racial balance unconstitutional in 2007. Wake County, N.C. -- which has bused for income balance for 10 years -- is often cited as glowing proof that this approach works. In 2007, Myron Orfield of the University of Minnesota's Institute on Race and Poverty, who has presented to the Eden Prairie school board on income-based school assignment, lauded Wake County's results in the Star Tribune.

Wake County citizens beg to differ. In 2009, they voted in a new school board, and today the program is being dismantled.

Income-based busing "sounds like a noble idea," says new board member John Tedesco. "But it was terrible for kids and for the community. We took our eye off the prize -- academic achievement for all kids -- and put it on trying to meet quotas in a balancing act."

In the last five years, Wake County test scores and graduation rates have dropped every year, and the racial achievement gap has widened, says Tedesco. Low-income students have suffered most. "We were classifying kids by group, and labeling low-income kids 'at risk' just because of the money in their parents' pockets," he says. "We've actually dumbed these kids down." A recent study found that 80 percent of high-performing low-income students, who should be in challenging classes, were in fact assigned to remedial classes, he adds.

Wake County's test scores and SAT scores are still better than those of most other North Carolina districts, according to Tedesco. But that's misleading. As home to the renowned "Research Triangle," the county has one of the most highly educated workforces in America. "The academic success we do have is attributable to our demographics, not our busing program," says Tedesco.

Income-based busing has provoked cultural division, not unity. "It started pitting us against one another, because it classified people in terms of groups and set school quotas," Tedesco explains. Ironically, racial segregation has actually increased in Wake County schools. While the county's overall poverty rate is about 10 percent, its schools are now at 30 percent because the affluent are fleeing to private schools, says Tedesco. The national average for opting out of public schools is about 8 1/2 percent, he says. "Our rate has doubled in 10 years to almost 18 percent. Guess who's left behind?"

Tedesco sums up Wake County's "nightmare" this way: "Income-based busing tore apart our schools. It tore apart our community. It got our parents fighting one another. It created an academic mess, an efficiency mess and a cultural mess."

Eden Prairie is one of a number of districts -- including Hopkins, Bloomington and Osseo -- where racial and income "balancing" is a growing issue. Orfield has proposed a "comprehensive strategy to integrate" the entire Twin Cities metro area.

Before Minnesota embarks on yet another grand experiment in wishful thinking and social engineering, we might listen to David Armor of George Mason University, who has studied busing and desegregation for 30 years. Districts that consider income-based busing plans "are undertaking policy shifts that bring great controversy and costs, with no solid evidence that this will improve education for anyone,"

KK applauds America for believing another set of lies

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Last week's historic election repudiated the grandiose, left-wing governance schemes of President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress. Conservatives are still toasting the victory. But the election, and the two years leading up to it, hold lessons that go well beyond this election cycle. America, it turns out, is a far more resilient nation than we had feared.

When Obama walked through the White House doors in January 2009, several factors suggested that, from a conservative point of view, the world was coming to an end.

Obama had billed himself as postpartisan and pragmatic. But he demonstrated quickly that his "hope and change" program meant not just a tilt to the port side but a hard-left tack. He pushed relentlessly for schemes of unprecedented scope --from a quasi-governmental takeover of health care to potentially economically debilitating cap-and-trade legislation. Conservatives feared that even if such changes prompted grumbling they would eventually embed themselves in voters' expectations.

Obama's allies in his campaign to remake America, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, steered the liberal juggernaut through a Democrat-heavy House and a filibuster-proof Senate. This trio's bare-knuckle, Chicago-style approach seemed almost invincible. They rammed through a deeply unpopular health care bill by using end runs around Senate rules and bald-faced buyoffs, including the infamous "Cornhusker kickback" and "Louisiana Purchase" that finally snared support from Sens. Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu.

Conservatives could also point to larger factors that seemed to signal an ominous long-term trend. After Obama's election, liberal commentators proclaimed that a permanent realignment of single women, young people, blacks and Latinos would soon render conservative politicians extinct. In his 2009 "The Death of Conservatism," Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, announced that the decades-long "Reagan Revolution" was dead and buried and that Big Government was here to stay.

To these prophesies, many conservatives added cultural concerns. They warned of a softening of character and a decline of civil society that threatened to push Americans into government's smothering embrace. They cited the deterioration of the family -- society's most fundamental governmental unit -- and a campaign by elites to redefine marriage itself. And they pointed to an erosion of religion and other cultural guideposts that hold us to a standard higher than "give me mine."

As conservatives looked across the Atlantic, their gloom increased. They feared they saw the end game of Obama's welfare state in chaotic Greece and France, with their ever-expanding public sectors, powerful unions and insatiable sense of entitlement.

But last week's repudiation of Big Government confirmed that we were wrong to be tempted by despair. The election demonstrated that there is something in the American spirit that rejects the siren song of the nanny state.

The gains were sensational -- at least 61 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the biggest electoral shift since 1948. In the Senate, a pickup of six seats may bring de facto control, as some Democrats there show newfound zeal for working with Republicans. (Divided House and Senate control may be the best scenario for Republicans going into the presidential race of 2012). Republicans now hold at least 30 governorships. The GOP gained more than 680 state legislative seats nationwide -- giving it the greatest number of seats since 1928 -- and now has majorities in both legislative chambers in 26 states.

In Minnesota, Republicans won majorities in the both the House and Senate and saw newcomer Chip Cravaack defeat liberal icon Jim Oberstar in the Eighth Congressional District. The governor's race may be close enough to trigger a recount.

Hopefully liberals will learn a lesson about political hubris and overreach. But the election holds a more important and reassuring lesson for conservatives: Americans can stand up to liberalism's temptations. They can see government "candy" for what it is and have the wherewithal to reject it as undermining the ideas at our nation's core: liberty, free enterprise, opportunity and self-determination.

The grass-roots revolt began with ordinary people standing up, one by one, at town hall forums to proclaim their opposition to Big Government. Legions of activists and candidates -- completely new to politics -- reenergized demoralized conservatives. The Tea Party movement grew spontaneously, as citizens said "no" to replacing America's founding vision of individualism and limited government with a statist model that will restrict freedom in the name of redistributionist "fairness" and encumber future generations with a crushing public debt.

The great lesson of this election is that America may not be on an inexorable slide to soft political tyranny and cultural drift. Our nation is built of sterner stuff than we dared to hope."

KK is reminded of Halloween and the boogie man

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In the heady days of 2008, Americans warmed quickly to the prospect of Barack Obama as our 44th president. Obama promised to be just what our fractured nation needed -- a non-ideological, post-partisan consensus builder, guided by mainstream pragmatic thinking.

When the story broke about Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- his pastor for 20 years, a "black-power" radical and a fan of Fidel Castro -- we raised our eyebrows. We did the same when we heard of Obama's longtime connection to Bill Ayers, an unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorist. But Obama blew these relationships off as exaggerated or unimportant, and we trusted his assurances.

Now a new book by Stanley Kurtz -- a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Harvard PhD -- reveals why we should have probed the disconnect when we had a chance. Americans increasingly sense we were sold a bill of goods, and Kurtz explains why in "Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism." Our president isn't what he claims to be, says Kurtz. Obama's plummeting approval ratings, and the electoral tsunami about to hit Democrats, reflect voters' sense of betrayal.

In fact, Kurtz goes further, and makes an electrifying charge: Obama has purposely disguised what he believes, and is actively seeking to mislead the American people about his agenda. Obama, says Kurtz, is a socialist. He believes -- not in state ownership -- but in a savvier version of socialism that seeks to transform and undermine American capitalism through ever-expanding government control; irreversible entitlements; and a metastasizing public sector.

I know this sounds far-fetched. Even Kurtz says he didn't expect it when he began his research. But the more we learn about "community organizing" -- which Obama has called the "best education" he ever had -- the more we see that Wright and Ayers were clues to a below-the-radar radical network that has shaped both the president's worldview and the deceptive tactics he uses to disguise it.

Americans were lulled into ignoring Obama's background because they think of "community organizers" as well-intentioned do-gooders. In fact, the father of community organizing was Saul Alinsky, a far-left icon and the author of the 1971 book, "Rules for Radicals." Alinsky taught that community organizing is about accumulating the raw power necessary for the radical transformation of America's economic and social structure.

Alinsky knew that the American people are not ready for socialism. To advance radical goals, he said, activists must pose as pragmatists and work within the system. While New Left radicals were rioting at the 1968 Democratic convention, Alinskyite community organizers were working behind the scenes, infiltrating Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and funneling money to their far-left organizations. In dealing with "enemies" Alinsky was ruthless. He advocated the "politics of personal destruction": "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Obama began his career as a community organizer in Chicago in 1985. His teachers were Alinsky disciples, and he immersed himself in their ideas and methods. For years, Obama ran workshops on Alinsky's methodology, worked with Alinskyite organizations, and served on radical boards.

Obama got his start in politics in 1996, when Illinois state Sen. Alice Palmer hand-picked him to succeed her. Kurtz describes Palmer as a "hard Marxist," who had praised the Soviet Union in the communist People's Daily World. Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn -- another notorious Weather Underground alum -- hosted an announcement party at their home. During his campaign, Obama promised to bring the spirit of community organizing to his new position.

In 2004, after Obama became a U.S. senator, Michelle Obama confirmed his Alinskyite intentions. "Barack is not a politician first and foremost," she said. "He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change."

Obama's immersion in socialist organizing, and his mastery of the tactics of infiltration and disguise, explain both his agenda and modus operandi as president. He has relentlessly advanced the incremental strategy of his mentors -- vastly expanding state control in the health care, energy, environmental and financial sectors. Cronies from his community organizing days have advised his campaign, crafted his grassroots strategy and lobbied for his programs, according to Kurtz. We see Alinsky's ghost in Obama's tactical ruthlessness, and his ferocious, unprecedented demonization of opponents.

Over the past two years, Americans have grown increasingly angry that Obama's governance has differed so starkly from his campaign rhetoric. Kurtz reveals that Obama was intentionally deceiving us all along."

KK takes on TIZA again ..

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The battle over the role of Islam in a Minnesota public school is heating up again in a federal courtroom in St. Paul. The conflict began in January 2009, when the ACLU of Minnesota sued Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy -- a K-8 charter school with campuses in Inver Grove Heights and Blaine -- for violating constitutional prohibitions against government endorsement of religion.

TiZA since has fought tooth and nail -- erecting procedural barriers to prevent the ACLU from investigating what goes on behind its doors. The school's tactics have gone far beyond the usual rough-and-tumble of lawyers in our adversary system. Its chief tool has been attempted intimidation of all who would draw back the curtain on its secrets.

One of TiZA's first targets was the ACLU itself. A few months after the suit began, the school filed a $100,000-plus defamation claim, citing ACLU executive director Chuck Samuelson's simple statement that "[TiZA is] a theocratic school ... as plain as the substantial nose on my face." The court dismissed the claim.

In January 2010, the ACLU was back in court to seek a protective order, on grounds that intimidation by TiZA was discouraging potential witnesses from appearing. The ACLU filed affidavits by a former TiZA parent and a former TiZA staff member, who described what they interpreted as threats of violence against them. In her affidavit, the female staff member said that Asad Zaman -- TiZA's executive director -- had suggested after she displeased him: "We could just kill you, yeah tell your husband we'll do his job for him." (Zaman has no recollection of making such a statement, he said in an affidavit.) The court barred witness harassment or intimidation by either party.

In June 2010, the ACLU returned to court to quash what it described as yet another TiZA attempt to intimidate current and former employees from speaking about what they had seen at the public school. TiZA's "Staff Handbooks include a secrecy clause, and related threat of legal action for violating it," according to the ACLU's court filings. TiZA "wields [these provisions] as a sledgehammer to keep former employees quiet about what they saw at the school." As a result, "former TiZA employees have expressed fear about speaking to the ACLU."

According to the ACLU, TiZA's refusal to agree not to enforce the secrecy clause "sends the ominous signal that current and former employees who talk to the ACLU may be forced to defend themselves against a baseless, expensive lawsuit."

On Oct. 1, Judge Donovan Frank agreed -- affirming an order the ACLU had earlier won barring TiZA from enforcing the confidentiality clause in the context of this litigation.

The court's order and memorandum spoke volumes: "It appears that information related to TiZA's business, finances, operations and office procedures is public data and cannot be kept secret." "The relevant question ... is why TiZA, a public charter school, does not want to allow its former and current employees to participate in the informal discovery process to ascertain the truth about how TiZA operates."

The court's strong language in response to TiZA's actions was unusual: "[I]ntimidation and threats will not sit well with a fact-finder such as a jury." As a result of the school's actions, "[T]he Court may be required to draw adverse inferences about how TiZA operates as a result of TiZA's efforts to keep information about its operations secret. ... [TiZA's] behavior during the discovery process thus far ... has not been consistent with a good faith search for the truth."

The ACLU has characterized TiZA's recent actions regarding the secrecy clause as "only the last in a long line of intimidation efforts." Not quite. Last month, an attack was launched from a different front.

Several organizations that are not even parties to the lawsuit went to court in an attempt to disqualify the ACLU's lawyers -- Dorsey & Whitney -- from representing the ACLU on grounds that Dorsey personnel had previously communicated with Zaman about entities involved in the litigation. The organizations include the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MAS-MN), MAS-MN Property Holding Corporation and the Minnesota Education Trust (MET).

What might they fear? Perhaps that Dorsey lawyers are in a position to prove that the scandal thus far -- and Zaman's role in it -- is just the tip of the iceberg. Dorsey lawyers had this to say in a Sept. 10 letter filed with the court:

"The ACLU believes Mr. Zaman's testimony relating to control of virtually every significant event at TiZA, MAS-MN, MET and MET's subsidiaries, coupled with his efforts to hide such control, constitute powerful evidence against TiZA's denials that it is a Muslim school and that it funnels state and federal money to other Muslim organizations."

Every time we read about this lawsuit, we have to pinch ourselves and say: We're talking about a public, taxpayer-funded school.

KK explains why gay marriage is the most important issue

Katherine Kersten: This year, the family is on the ballot

Minnesota's choice for governor will determine marriage's fate in this state.

"

This year's election is supposed to be about jobs, bloated budget deficits, taxes and other economic issues. No doubt it will be. But more is at stake.

On Nov. 2, the family -- and marriage as we know it -- will be on the ballot in Minnesota.

Mark Dayton and Tom Horner both promise to bring same-sex marriage to our state. Their allies in the Legislature and a phalanx of pressure groups are poised to make this happen. Last year, a slew of bills related to this project was introduced. Gov. Tim Pawlenty's veto threat was vital to keeping them from becoming law.

Next year, Democrats will likely try to steamroll same-sex marriage through. If Dayton or Horner is elected, the governor will be on board -- perhaps even leading the charge.

Tom Emmer takes a different stance. He's the only gubernatorial candidate who supports marriage as the union of one man and one woman, as it has existed in Western civilization for 2,000 years.

Why redefine marriage? Dayton's and Horner's answers may sound appealing. On his website, Dayton promises to "make Minnesota the sixth state ... to recognize that the love and commitment shared by same-sex partners is as real and meaningful as their opposite-sex counterparts." On his site, Horner proclaims that "the quest for marriage equality is a simple matter of fairness, of equal opportunity under the law."

Notice: Neither Dayton nor Horner mentions the stakeholders who have the most to win or lose in the marriage battle -- children.

Though Dayton and Horner may be loath to admit it, marriage has been a male/female institution -- across the globe and throughout history -- for a simple reason, rooted in biology. Sex between men and women creates babies. It's the only kind of sex that does.

Marriage is a "conjugal" concept, based on the sexual complementarity of men and women. It channels the powerful male/female sex drive to positive ends, to ensure that children will -- whenever possible -- have the love, support and guidance of both their mother and father. By linking fathers to their children, marriage strengthens an otherwise tenuous bond that is vital for both children's and society's well-being.

This truth about marriage's core purpose is highly inconvenient for same-sex marriage supporters. To evade it, they employ a two-pronged rhetorical strategy.

First, they portray the purpose of marriage as being simply to encourage, and publicly affirm, adults' "love and commitment" -- Dayton's words. If we grant this premise, it becomes a denial of "equal rights" to withhold marriage from two men or two women who care for each other. "How will my same-sex marriage hurt your marriage?" gay-marriage supporters ask. They expect the answer to be "not at all."

But marriage is not primarily about affirming "love and commitment." Otherwise, government would regulate friendships as well as marriages. At its core, marriage is a social institution, whose public purpose is to structure male/female sexual relationships in a way that maximizes the next generation's well-being.

Same-sex marriage advocates' second rhetorical ploy is to charge that their opponents are motivated by fear, bigotry and hatred toward homosexuals. In 2004, for example, Dayton told a crowd of gay-rights activists that people who support a constitutional amendment to protect male-female marriage are "the forces of bigotry and hatred" who "spew hatred and inhumanity," according to the Star Tribune.

But most traditional-marriage supporters don't "fear" or "hate" homosexuals. On the contrary, they invite gays to live as they please. They simply believe that every child needs and deserves a mother and a father. And they suspect that the radical redefinition of marriage will have damaging, unpredictable long-term consequences for all of society.

I've got questions for Dayton and Horner:

If we abandon the conjugal idea of marriage -- and redefine marriage as appropriate for any two caring adults -- on what grounds can we continue to limit the institution to two people? If love and commitment are sufficient for two, why not three or more? "How does my polygamous marriage hurt your marriage?" Same-sex marriage supporters have no logical answer.

And how can we logically limit marriage to people in a sexual relationship? If marriage is simply about caring adults, why shouldn't a grandmother and daughter raising a child together have its benefits? Going forward, on what grounds can we discriminate against people simply because they don't have sex together?

Same-sex marriage supporters try to exploit Americans' goodwill. They know people don't want to be against "equal rights," or to be labeled a bigot or hate-monger. But support for traditional marriage has nothing to do with such things. It's about doing all we can to ensure that as many children as possible have what they need and deserve -- a mother and a father."

KK explains why Islam has more freedom

"

In April 2010, Molly Norris, an editorial cartoonist at the Seattle Weekly, learned that the creators of the TV comedy "South Park" had been threatened with death by a Muslim extremist. The threat came after an episode in which the Prophet Mohammed appeared in a bear suit -- an allusion to Islam's prohibition against his depiction.

Norris was indignant at this use of threats of violence to stifle free speech. In protest, she drew a lighthearted cartoon of a poster announcing "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day." Tongue firmly in cheek, she named the day's sponsor as a nonexistent group: "Citizens against Citizens against Humor."

Today, Norris fears for her own life. On the FBI's advice, she's "gone ghost" -- changed her name and identity and abandoned her livelihood. The reason: A radical Muslim imam has called for her assassination on grounds that she blasphemed against Islam.

This sort of assault on free speech -- one of the West's most cherished liberties -- has become sadly familiar in places like the Netherlands and Denmark. In 2004, for example, a Muslim extremist slit the throat of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in retribution for his movie condemning the abuse of women in conservative Islamic societies. In 2006, Dutch-Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- an outspoken critic of Islam -- was forced to flee Holland after threats on her life. In Denmark, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard lives under police protection after a Somali man attempted to murder him.

Now an event like this may be shaping up in America, with chilling implications for freedom and the rule of law. Yet chances are you haven't even heard about it.

Norris' disappearance was prompted by a "fatwa" issued by Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam living in Yemen. Awlaki has been cited as inspiring Nidal Hasan's massacre of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, as well as Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to bomb Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009 and the botched Times Square car bomb in May 2010.

Awlaki's fatwa against Norris was posted on the Internet by an Al Qaida- inspired magazine whose mission is to radicalize young Muslims. The fatwa ordered the cartoonist's "execution." Her "proper abode is hellfire," wrote Alwaki. "She "does not deserve life, does not deserve to breathe the air."

Surely, you say, American journalists and media moguls -- always staunch defenders of the First Amendment -- are proclaiming outrage and rallying round this young woman? On the contrary. The media have largely been silent about her nightmarish plight.

When the Washington Examiner, an on-line newspaper in Washington, D.C., asked the American Society of News Editors for a statement about Norris, none was forthcoming. Ditto for the Society of Professional Journalists. This, despite the fact that the editors group's mission statement extols "the First Amendment at home and free speech around the world," while the journalists claim to stand for "the perpetuation of the free press as the cornerstone of our nation and liberty."

Principle and backbone were more in evidence back in 1989, when Iran's radical Ayatollah Khomeini launched the current drive to extend Islamic law to the West. After Khomeini accused British novelist Salman Rushdie of blasphemy in "The Satanic Verses" and called for his death, the U.S. Senate unanimously resolved "to protect the right of any person to write, publish, sell, buy and read books without fear of violence."

But since 9/11, American media have increasingly caved to threats from radical Islam. The new norm is a self-censorship consistent with Muslim teaching that Islam must be free from insult, though other religions may be insulted at all times.

The best-known example of this double standard took place in 2005, when a handful of Danish cartoons mocking Mohammed sparked bloody riots throughout the Muslim world. American newspapers covered the protests closely. Yet only a handful of papers printed the cartoons that triggered the riots. Editors justified this self-censorship by invoking their "sensitivity" toward religious belief -- a quality rarely in evidence when the subject is Christianity.

This year, Yale University Press printed a book about the incident, entitled "The Cartoons That Shook the World." Originally, editors planned to include the cartoons, but Yale University intervened to prohibit this, citing concerns about violence.

When the Rev. Terry Jones, a self-promoting crackpot, threatened to burn the Qur'an, public figures -- starting with President Obama -- lined up to denounce his intolerance. Apparently, none of these people has had the courage to do the same with Awlaki and his henchmen, who pose a far greater danger.

Our elites, it seems, are content to leave gutsy individuals like Norris to stand up for the freedom at the core of Western civilization."

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/103748279.html?page=3&c=y

KK talks about new catholics

Here's an exerpt from this article:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/103167979.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:Ug8P:Pc:UiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUr

"The Catholic Church's days are numbered. At least, that seems to be the view of opinionmakers, who see it as hopelessly out of step and pushing a moral code that few want to be saddled with these days. Add to that clergy sexual abuse. Isn't this an institution on its last legs?

Paradoxically, here in the Twin Cities, young Catholics are responding with a hearty "no." This fall, St. Paul Seminary -- which prepares men for the priesthood -- has its largest enrollment since 1981: 92 seminarians.

Many are entering after successful careers. This year's class -- average age, 29 -- includes men with degrees in civil and electrical engineering, TV production, geography, animal science and criminology.

Well, maybe some older men are showing interest, but younger guys just want to party, right? Down the street at St. John Vianney Seminary (SJV) on the University of St. Thomas campus, 140 young men -- ages 18 to 22 -- are considering the priesthood. SJV is the largest collegiate seminary in the nation. Seminarians there may blast rock music, but they start the day at 6:15 a.m. with an hour of silent prayer, attend Mass daily and on Sundays sing the ancient "Salve Regina" in Latin before an icon of the Virgin Mary.

This phenomenon of young people devoting themselves to religious life is not confined to the Twin Cities. Mary Anne Marks, a 2010 summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University, is entering the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Marks delivered a commencement address in Latin at Harvard's graduation in May. She will join an entering class of 22 young women looking forward to a life of teaching, prayer and evangelism.

What draws young people to devote their lives to the Catholic Church -- widely regarded as intolerably judgmental and on the wane?

The Rev. Joe Bambenek, who has a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has an answer. He graduated from the St. Paul Seminary in May 2010, and is associate pastor at Nativity of Our Lord Church in St. Paul.

Bambenek suggests that disillusionment with today's culture of consumption and self-seeking is a powerful factor drawing young men and women to religious life.

"We've seen that a focus on materialism doesn't bring happiness," he says. As a result, "There is a hunger for things of God, an openness to God's word in our lives." It's precisely because this generation is so self-indulged, he adds, that "people are more willing, when they see the truth, to run after it." And when they experience the love and joy the truth brings, they want to share it.

Robert Kennedy, who teaches at the seminary, agrees. "Young men there sometimes tell me, 'We've had a career. Now we want a life.' They mean a vocation, a calling," he says.

Bambenek is a case in point. Before entering the seminary, he worked for an electric power company. In 2002, he racked up 230 plane flights, negotiating rules for high-voltage transmission system use.

Then his boss' wife came down with terminal cancer. "I discovered that walking with him through that experience was more meaningful and more satisfying than negotiating power rules," he says.

Seminarians study ancient wisdom and timeless truths to be best equipped to take on vexing contemporary problems. Their reading list includes Greek philosophers and the moral theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. In a society obsessed with the latest thing -- from smart phones to celebrity gossip -- this lineup may sound strange.

But there's a good reason for it, says Bambenek. While the world around us may change, human beings do not. We struggle with death, suffering, loneliness, disappointment, rejection -- always have, always will.

"As human beings, we're called by God to be good," says Bambenek. "But we also have the weakness of sin. Both our goodness and our sinfulness, at their core, don't change. That's why the truths God has revealed to us are always relevant."

In the end, today's seminarians have made a choice that is profoundly countercultural.

"Every generation forgets that young people want to be inspired by a big challenge," says Kennedy. For baby boomers, being countercultural meant wearing tie-dyed T-shirts and flashing the peace sign. It carried no risk, no cost.

"But there's nothing bigger and more challenging than the life these young people are taking on," says Kennedy. "They are getting ready to go out and engage a culture -- by their garb, their occupation, their very countercultural embrace of celibacy. It's very public, and it carries a lot of risk."

For today's seminarians, this is true freedom. "The Gospel message is a joyful message -- the message of freedom through God's truth, God's grace," says Bambenek. "When we're acting as God designed us, we're able to be all he made us to be."

KK explains how you should spend your time..

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/102655644.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1PciUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

"

On a typical evening we flop down, flip on the 36-inch flat screen, click the mouse, text, tweet, or feast on Facebook. The more adventurous among us grab virtual swords and enter the explosion-filled, fantasy universe of games like World of Warcraft, where we achieve instant superhero status.

We're megaconsumers of passive entertainment, spoon-fed by faceless folks in Hollywood or at companies like Sony. It's fun. It's relaxing. But when we log off, we often have a nagging question: Have we just wasted a lot of time?

It's a good bet Ingemar Holm never asks himself that question. Holm, 73, of Delano, is retired. The perfect time to enjoy passive entertainment, you say? Not Holm. He's got something that sounds long-ago and far-away: what we used to call a "hobby."

Holm's hobby is restoring vintage aircraft. He and his buddy Jim Johns, 75, of Bloomington have restored 18 World War II airplanes. Their latest project -- in which Dale Johnson, 73, of Burnsville and a dedicated band of three or four others have joined -- is the painstaking restoration of a World War II CG-4 combat glider.

The CG-4 was a giant, engineless aircraft -- a fragile contraption of wood and canvas that was towed at night behind cargo planes and released for what were often clandestine, behind-the-lines missions. Between 1942 and 1944, about 4,000 Twin Citians labored around the clock to turn out these "flying coffins," making 1,500 of the 14,000 produced nationwide.

The CG-4 glider was the only military aircraft ever made in Minnesota, according to Johns. Today, only seven remain in the world, most in woeful disrepair.

There's not a screen, a mouse or a game controller to be seen in the Eagan workshop where the glider is slowly coming to life. Instead of offering nonstop "fun," the project, begun in 2007, requires careful planning and slow, steady attention to detail.

The group began by tracking down the glider's rusty frame in Missouri, then obtained 1,250 pages of original blueprints from a Texas museum. Today, these plans are guiding them as they painstakingly duplicate and install the glider's 70,000 parts -- 69,900 made of wood, Johns estimates. The CG-4 has an 84-foot wingspan, and is largely "glued, taped and tied" together, requiring 15 miles of cord and 10 miles of electrical tape.

To build an aircraft like this requires thousands of man-hours, as well as the ability to delay gratification until the great day when the glider -- now 80 percent finished -- is complete. How did Holm, Johns and Johnson develop the abilities and character traits necessary to do this?

As boys, they were all captivated by the wonder of flight. Johnson credits his childhood on a farm in Bathgate, N.D., with firing his imagination and teaching him to stick to a task. "If you wanted a toy, you had to make one," he says. He pounded his first airplane together out of old barn boards.

As a boy, Holm used to hang around a giant pile of wooden discards at the old Tonka Toy factory in Mound. "We'd find busted wheels, and take them home to build our own cars, trucks and planes from the rejects," he recalls. Johns, for his part, remembers lovingly constructing model airplanes out of cardboard, because wood was hard to come by. "You'd spend hours cutting out and gluing the 1/16th-inch layers, and then sand them down into just the right shape."

What differentiates these men's hobby -- inspired by childhood games and projects -- from our electronic playland? Unlike our frenetic digital amusements, their use of leisure time requires patience, resourcefulness, self-discipline and perseverance.

It also hones valuable, real-life skills -- in their case, in design and wood and metal working. With these skills, they can create something tangible, instead of getting caught up in will-o-the-wisp superman clicks that evaporate each night into the ethernet. Rather than offering an escape from life, their hobby is life-enhancing.

By sharing their work on the glider, Holm, Johns and the others have forged deep personal bonds. Their camaraderie distinguishes them from the solitary man in his basement, who stares night after night at his glowing screen. It has also given them a stake in their community's -- and their nation's -- history. When the glider is finished, Holm, Johns and the others plan to return it to the people of Minnesota.

In 25 years, how many of us will be equipped to take on the kind of creative project these men are engaged in? When we get drawn into our passive, seductive electronic world, are we just indulging in a few hours of misspent leisure time, or is there something more at stake?"

KK takes on economics ..

The following is an excerpt found here:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/102186784.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1PciUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

"This Labor Day weekend, work is in short supply. Unemployment is almost 10 percent, and higher when you include those who have given up seeking work. The economy grew at a snail-paced 1.6 percent in the second quarter of 2010. Many economists fear that third-quarter growth will actually be negative.

President Obama assures us that he and Congress have been working overtime to get Americans out of this hole. He points to his nearly trillion-dollar stimulus -- which, astonishingly, exceeded the cost of the entire Iraq war, according to the Congressional Budget Office. He points to costly bailouts, to loan guarantees, to "cash for clunkers" and to his $8,000 tax credit for housing. But this avalanche of taxpayer money -- and the staggering national debt it's producing -- weren't enough, it seems. What now? Obama tells us we may need another stimulus.

As the Wall Street Journal put it last week: "Never before has government tried to do so much and achieved so little."

Americans know that the Obama/Pelosi plan to create jobs by expanding government isn't working. In fact, they believe -- increasingly -- that Obama's tactics are actually killing jobs. At the Technology Policy Institute's recent Aspen Forum, Intel CEO Paul Otellini issued a clarion call to face the economic facts that Team Obama is ignoring.

America is at a turning point, Otellini warned. Unless government policies change, he predicted, "the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here. And wealth will not accrue here." Our nation's legal and political environment is now so hostile to business, he said, that we can expect "an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth -- much like we're seeing today in Europe. This is the bitter truth."

America's combined state and federal corporate income tax rate -- at about 38 percent -- is the second highest in the industrial world, said Otellini. (The industrialized-nation average is 18.2 percent.) "It is precisely these high statutory corporate rates that punish the most dynamic and innovative firms and hinder their ability to compete globally," he said. Congress has compounded the problem by repeatedly failing to make an R&D tax credit permanent.

"I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory [out of $4 billion] for me to build, equip and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States," Otellini said. "Ninety percent of the cost difference" is the result of tax and incentive policies. "With such policies," he asked, "are we surprised that companies are investing overseas?"

Obama and Co. have ramped up the obstacles American businesses face by piling on onerous new laws and regulations. They've enacted a sprawling 2,400-page health care law and a 2,300-page financial regulation law. Just around the corner? Perhaps union "card check" legislation and crushing new carbon regulations.

No one knows how the blizzard of new --and potential -- laws and regulations will affect the future costs of hiring and doing business. The resulting uncertainty has paralyzed the economy.

Obamacare is already killing jobs, though it does not go into effect fully until 2014. For example, Assurant Health recently laid off 130 workers at its offices in Milwaukee and in the Twin Cities suburb of Plymouth to prepare for the new law's costly mandates. Small-business owners fear adding workers -- in part because of Obamacare's red tape, which includes a requirement to file an IRS 1099 form for every vendor from whom they buy $600 or more in goods. All this before the regulations that spell out Obamacare's details are even written.

The Dodd/Frank financial regulation law is another unknown. It requires "no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies," according to the Wall Street Journal. Their content is anyone's guess.

On taxes, confusion reigns. Will the Bush tax cuts be allowed to expire at the end of this year? If so, we will face the largest tax rise in at least 16 years. Will Congress raise the payroll tax? Pass a value-added tax? No one knows.

Obama seems oblivious to the havoc he and his allies in Congress are wreaking. The president has staffed his administration with ideologues who are big on academic theories but woefully short of real-world experience. Few have ever operated a business, or have made a payroll, or have been held accountable for the real-world consequences of their actions.

Increasingly, the American people seem to agree with Mort Zuckerman -- publisher, real-estate mogul and former big-time Obama fan. Obama's administration is "the most hostile to business in decades," Zuckerman said recently. The man who promised "hope" and "change" is presiding over "the most fiscally irresponsible government in America..."

KK Takes on Negative Campaign Ads..At Least One Side

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/101681008.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

"So Mark Dayton has called for an end to negative campaign ads. That's rich.

Dayton's pose as the White Knight of Minnesota Politics is the height of hypocrisy. While he claims the high road, his family is funding the Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM) below the radar screen. ABM is a sophisticated attack machine that's conducted a smear campaign against Dayton's Republican opponent, Tom Emmer.

ABM's dirty work has just begun. As of mid-July, the Dayton family had poured $851,000 into two front groups that funnel money to ABM, while Big Labor's hefty contributions to those groups brought the total to over $2 million.

If Dayton doesn't know about ABM's down-and-dirty modus operandi, he's the only Minnesota politician who's clueless on that score. ABM is a communications hub that exists to push out negative messages on behalf of DFL candidates like Dayton, so they can keep their hands clean.

ABM cut its teeth in 2006 and 2008 with blisteringly negative ads aimed at Tim Pawlenty and Norm Coleman. In crafting its battle plans, it had access to well-known national masters of negativity. That's because ABM is the Minnesota branch of ProgressNow, a national activist network with affiliates in 12 states.

ProgressNow is a vital component of a strategy hatched in Colorado in 2004 by a small group of ultrawealthy left-wing political activists. Their goal: to turn America's red states blue by creating a highly coordinated network of lavishly funded nonprofits to promote "progressive" candidates and issues.

ProgressNow's director is Bobby Clark (Howard Dean's online guru); MoveOn.org founder Wes Boyd was an early leader. The group's scorched-earth approach to politics is best summed up by an internal memo -- leaked in 2008 -- that called for defining a Republican candidate "foot on throat."

ProgressNow board member Ted Trimpa says "you have to create an environment of fear and respect" in dealing with opponents. "The only way ... is to get aggressive and go out and actually beat them up [politically]."

A new book, "The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado," tells the story of ProgressNow and the movement that gave rise to it. According to its authors -- Denver journalist Adam Schrager and former Colorado Republican legislator Rob Witwer -- ProgressNow CEO Michael Huttner and his group's affiliates "wake up in the morning with one question on their minds." In Huttner's words: "How do we get earned media to advance our agenda and to criticize our opponents?"

"We'll go after them [Republicans] very starkly and in a way that draws emotion," Huttner told Schrager. "It's too hard-hitting for some politicians to say these things, even if they really want someone else to say them."

The result? In Colorado, where ProgressNow is best-established, "the Democrats have outsourced the politics of personal destruction to a bunch of nonprofits," said Jon Caldara of the state's Independence Institute.

ProgressNow's fingerprints are all over ABM's anti-Emmer attack ads. FactCheck.org -- operated by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center -- labeled "false" ABM's claim that Emmer had voted against a bill to make "corporations and CEO's" pay higher taxes. The ad's claim that Emmer's vote "created" a huge state deficit is "pure nonsense," according to FactCheck.org.

Regarding ABM's "misleading" ad claiming that Emmer sponsored a bill to "reduce penalties for drunk drivers," FactCheck.org had this to say: The bill "actually sought to prevent suspected drunk drivers from losing their licenses and having their vehicles seized ... before they have been given a chance to defend themselves in court."

Thanks in part to Dayton family cash, ABM has blanketed the state with these distorted messages. As of Aug. 10, ABM's anti-Emmer TV ads had appeared 2,400 times, while the one positive pro-Emmer ad that ran had appeared a mere 330 times, according to the Campaign Media Analysis group.

ABM is also using Dayton family money to wage political guerrilla warfare. It has worked to keep the boycott against Target Corp. in the headlines, allegedly on grounds that Emmer -- like Barack Obama -- does not support gay marriage. ABM bought Facebook ads targeting 57,000 Target employees, and launched a poll of Target employees and Target Facebook "fans" to stir up animosity against the giant retailer. Its goal: to bully and intimidate corporations that donate to probusiness candidates.

In his call to end attack ads, Dayton lamented "the whole attack ad approach where you try to destroy someone personally to defeat them politically." "The antidote," he said, "is for voters to say, 'No.'" Even then, "you're not going to stop some people from operating out of the sewer."

You can say that again. But what if, as in Dayton's case, "some people" includes your own"

KK not around but Slick Nick takes on the political babe gig

This is an excerpt from Nick's column found here:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/101193564.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:Ug8P:Pc:UiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

"The summer is coming quickly to an end, but not quickly enough. Summer is the silly season in politics, and Minnesotans are being exposed this month to a clown-car full of silliness that makes us long for Labor Day, the resumption of school, and the more substantive and serious political discussions we need to have before election day.

What can you do, for example, with the frat-boy video posted on the Internet by some of the fun-loving guys in the Minnesota Republican Party that made the claim that Republican women are hot babes while Democratic women are dogs?

The video (which has been removed from the website of the Senate District 56 GOP in Lake Elmo) was denounced by all the usual suspects on all sides of the political divide, repudiated in such muscular terms that it would be understandable now if someone got the mistaken impression that Republicans have abandoned any claim that GOP women are attractive and admit they are just as unappealing as Janet Reno.

Just to be clear, that is not what the Republicans are saying. Ever since Mamie Eisenhower and Barbara Bush, however, the Republicans have seemed a bit defensive about the women in their party. Take Tim Pawlenty: The governor is married to "a red-hot smoking wife," he has said, which is the kind of crack that might get a Democrat a wife who would just be hot under the collar. And Sarah Palin? Her handlers apparently worried so much that she wasn't smokin' hot enough for prime time after McCain picked her as her running mate in 2008 that the first thing they did was take her on a prettification tour of Macy's, to the tune of $150,000.

But there is nothing new about the grating and drooling GOP video, which mimicked a lot of dorm room posters. The 90th anniversary of women's suffrage, Women's Equality Day, will be observed Thursday, but sexists have never stopped barraging women with messages saying they are needed at home too much to vote and they are too gosh darn cute to worry their pretty little heads about politics.

Women in politics have always been stereotyped: Hatchet-faced suffragettes, mannish policy wonks, bra-burning harpies: From Susan B. Anthony to Eleanor Roosevelt to Bella Abzug, Hilary Clinton and Elena Kagan. Many of the history-making women over the past century have been Democrats because, with the great exceptions of slavery and Civil Rights, the Democrats have been at the forefront of social and cultural change. A lot of people don't like that, especially in the ranks of conservatives uncomfortable still with the role of women in the national discussion.

Here is Ann Coulter -- one of the right's favorite hotties, who says she has never met an attractive liberal woman -- on the subject of women and voting:

"It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 -- except Goldwater in '64 -- the Republican would have won if only the men had voted."

Yes, and if women didn't vote, it would make the United States just like ... Saudi Arabia. Go back to the kitchen, Ms. Coulter, and cover your pretty little head.

Actually, men also voted (by a slim margin) for Barack Obama in 2008, so Coulter's bombast is out of date. But the part that really makes many women ugly to Republicans is that most women usually vote for the other side. In the last presidential election, women split 56-43 for Obama over the GOP candidate, John McCain. And single women -- the unmarried, divorced, separated and widowed -- went overwhelmingly for the Democrat, 70 percent to 29 percent.

That's why radio bully Rush Limbaugh rails against "feminazis" and seems to long for the day when gentlemen smoked cigars after the women retired to the kitchen so the guys could discuss politics and sate their oral fixations.

I almost feel sorry for the Minnesota doofuses -- one of them unfortunately named Randy -- who posted the hot Republican babes video when, in their own words, they are perplexed by the fact that more women vote than men and "the startling fact is that more than 75 percent of them vote Democrat!"

Gosh, fellas, I've got a great idea: In our quest to get more babes to vote for us, let's put up a video that shows that any chick who votes for a Democrat is an ugly man-hater.

The bottom line is that one of our political parties has a problem with women.

But it isn't the Democrats.

They have most of the women, and, for their candidates, that's a beautiful thing.

KK takes on Prop 8 reversal ..

This is part of KK's column located here :

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/100657694.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:Ug8P:Pc:UiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

"Did you know that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are bigots? Ditto for the justices of New York's, Maryland's and Washington's highest state courts. And there are at least 7 million bigots in California alone, along with legions more across the country.

Their strange and aberrant delusion? They believe -- or say it's reasonable to believe -- that traditional marriage is a social good that serves our nation well.

So says federal Judge Vaughn Walker, who recently overturned Proposition 8 -- passed by California voters in 2008 to enshrine one man/one woman marriage in their state's constitution. Walker ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional under the U.S. constitution. Only "prejudice," "fear" and "misinformation," he said, can explain Californians' support for it.

Anyone who wonders why Americans are up in arms over the arrogance of our quasi-totalitarians in black robes -- activist judges who want to rule your life -- should flip through Walker's opinion.

Arrogance and disdain for those who dare to disagree drip from every page:

So what if male/female marriage has been the core institution in virtually every human society? Walker dictates that male/female differences shall henceforth be eradicated from marriage. "Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage," he ruled, rejecting other views as "antiquated" and "discredited."

And the universal belief that kids do best with both a mom and a dad? That one goes in the garbage can, too. It's "beyond any doubt" that "parents' genders are irrelevant to children's developmental outcomes," he instructs us.

Walker's 136-page opinion is rife with contempt for American citizens, who are too ignorant and easily led to have a voice in defining marriage. As a result, the issue of marriage is "beyond the constitutional reach of the voters or their representatives," Walker tells us. In other words, get in line and shut up.

Walker's central finding is that there is no conceivable rational argument for defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Only "a fear or unarticulated dislike of same-sex couples" can account for it, he says.

Yet marriage is rooted in biology -- a fact that Walker can't wish away. Marriage is a male/female institution because only sex between men and women produces children. To survive and flourish, a society must channel male/female erotic desires into responsible procreation. Marriage binds parents -- especially fathers -- to their offspring, assuring that children will have both parents' love, guidance and economic support.

The two sexes also bring different and complementary strengths to parenting. Mothers, for example, are more attuned than fathers to the cries, gestures and language of babies, toddlers and teens -- and so are better at nurturing children physically and emotionally. (The hormone oxytocin may play an important role here.) Fathers, on the other hand, are particularly good at ensuring safety and encouraging children to shoulder challenging tasks. Men's size and strength provide an advantage in discipline, particularly with boys.

Judge Walker assures us that radically redefining marriage would have no adverse social consequences. Yet it would likely erode vital social norms, including the expectation that men should take responsibility for children they beget. America already has a 40 percent out-of-wedlock birth rate, and can ill afford this. Another norm at risk is marital fidelity. A recent groundbreaking study found that "about 50 percent" of gay male couples in the San Francisco Bay Area "have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners," according to the New York Times. "With straight people, it's called affairs or cheating, but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations," researcher Colleen Hoff told the Times.

Despite such facts, Walker insists that benighted, private "moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples."

Morality and religion are deeply intertwined with our ideas of justice. Is Walker suggesting that because the modern civil-rights movement was religiously motivated, we should reject the laws that it inspired?

In fact, Walker may have his own private reasons for overturning Prop 8. He is "openly gay" and "attends bar functions with a companion, a physician," the Los Angeles Times reported last month. If Walker is in a stable gay relationship, he has a personal interest in gay marriage that may legally disqualify him from ruling on Prop 8.

Walker's failure to disclose his relationship requires that his opinion be vacated and a new trial be held before a different judge, Chapman University law professor John Eastman wrote last week.

Walker's attempt to smuggle in his own, self-interested version of morality may be the real reason for his arrogant..."

KK takes on who gets more political contributions

Here's a part of this article:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/100159624.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1PciUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

"

Few American political stereotypes are as durable as the myth that Republicans are the party of fat cats. You know -- the corporate tycoons and investment bankers who puff cigars in dark, paneled rooms as they bankroll elections for Big Business. Democrats, in the myth's telling, are Ordinary Joes -- lunch-bucket types who fight a lopsided, uphill battle against entrenched big-money interests.

Welcome to the real world, Minnesotans.

In the 2010 governor's race, it's Republican Tom Emmer -- an Ordinary Joe with seven kids to feed -- who's pounding the pavement for every $1,000 check he brings in. He and his team spend lots of time focusing on small donors -- the source, despite the myth, of a disproportionate amount of the Republican Party's cash.

But isn't Big Business pulling the strings for Emmer behind the scenes? Hardly. We saw that recently, when Target Corp. gave $150,000 to MN Forward -- a business-friendly PAC that supports Emmer against his three Democratic rivals, who have all vowed to raise taxes. Liberals and the media went berserk. As they tarred and feathered Target, their message was clear: Companies that support Republican efforts risk paying a big public-relations price.

Meanwhile, the three DFL candidates for governor have raised a cool $9 million for their campaigns -- a sum that dwarfs Emmer's $910,000. Two of those candidates, gazillionaires Matt Entenza and Mark Dayton, are financing their races from their own capacious pockets. Unlike Emmer, they don't have to eat rubber-chicken dinners at rinky-dink fundraisers. They just write gold-plated checks to themselves.

Entenza has loaned his campaign $4.7 million heading into Tuesday's DFL primary. The money comes courtesy of his wife's fortune, made in the health care industry.

But the 800-pound gorilla in the governor's race is Mark Dayton, department store heir and current front-runner. Dayton's wealth has enabled him to make running for public office a hobby for 30 years.

In 1982 he dropped $6.7 million on a failed U.S. Senate campaign. In 1998, the figure was $2.1 million for an unsuccessful governor's bid. In 2000, he spent a whopping $12 million to become a U.S. senator. In the current campaign, so far, the sum is $3.3 million. All told, that's a jaw-dropping $24 million of Dayton dough.

Dayton's own resources are augmented by donations to DFL interests from his megarich family. In this election cycle, the family -- his son, aunt, cousin and ex-wife-- have poured $851,000 into two DFL political action committees: Win Minnesota and the 2010 Fund. That's almost as much as Emmer has raised in his entire campaign.

The biggest family donor is Alida Messinger, Dayton's ex-wife. (Must have been a friendly breakup!) She's contributed an eye-popping $550,000 to the two PACS.

The source of Messinger's money? She's the great-granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller -- founder of Standard Oil -- who nearly monopolized the American oil business in the late 1800s and died with a fortune valued at $670 billion in current dollars.

Wait. Isn't it Republicans who are supposed to be in the pocket of Big Oil?

The DFL's bottomless well of cash has another source: Big Labor. Since 2009, Minnesota's three largest public-employee labor unions have spent $750,000 on the DFL agenda -- five times as much as the Target gift to MN Forward that so incensed liberals.

What does this flood of money make possible? Among other things, an endless barrage of anti-Emmer TV ads. They're being underwritten -- to the tune of $685,000 so far -- by a PAC called Alliance for a Better Minnesota. Where does its money come from? Win Minnesota and the 2010 Fund -- the Dayton family piggybanks -- are major sources, having funneled it $1.6 million in this election cycle.

This clever arrangement is handy for Mark Dayton. It means his own campaign can claim the high ground, with feel-good TV ads about Dayton's concern for little folks. Meanwhile, Dayton's family helps fund a second-track, below-the-radar blitz of anti-Emmer attack ads.

For years, liberals and the media have fulminated about "too much money" in politics, and have called loudly for campaign finance reform. This year, however, they're happy to watch as superrich DFLers bulldoze their way through Minnesota's political landscape. If the situation were reversed -- if Emmer were the free-spending millionaire -- I suspect we'd see indignant headlines every week.

The Democratic money machine may succeed in buying the governor's mansion for Dayton -- whom Time magazine named as one of the five worst senators in 2005.

Then again, maybe not. In 2009, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey -- a fiscal conservative and scourge of public-employee unions -- surged to victory after being outspent three to one by his multimillionaire Democratic opponent."

KK takes on journalism

Here's some of what she said, the rest can be read at

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/99664484.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:Ug8P:Pc:UiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

"

It's an open secret that American journalists lean to the left. For 40 years, surveys have found that self-described liberals in the media outnumber conservatives by as much as five to one.

President Obama's rise to power has supercharged journalists' liberal inclinations. Going into the 2008 election, Slate -- an online, Washington Post-owned news magazine -- was the only media organization that actually polled its staff, to my knowledge. Obama won by a landslide: 96 percent. At the Post itself, omsbudsman Deborah Howell acknowledged after the election that she had voted for Obama, along with "most Post journalists." In August 2008, she reported that the Post had given Obama front-page coverage three times more often than McCain -- a "disparity ... so wide," she admitted, "that it doesn't look good."

During the 2008 campaign, the American people sensed that the media were in Obama's corner. In July 2008, a Rasmussen survey found that more than three times as many likely voters "believe most reporters will try to help Obama with their coverage" rather than McCain. A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll found that almost 70 percent of Americans believed "most members of the media" wanted Obama to win.

Now we have new revelations of media bias -- perhaps the most dramatic yet -- with the release of e-mails from Journolist, an invitation-only listserv founded in 2007 by Washington Post staffer Ezra Klein. Journolist members included about 400 journalists, editors, bloggers, magazine writers, academics and policy wonks -- among them dozens of straight-news reporters from organizations such as Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, the Economist, Politico, PBS and a large NPR affiliate

Recently, a website called the Daily Caller obtained Journolist's e-mail archives. The e-mails resoundingly confirm the public's image of liberal journalists as cheerleaders for the Democratic Party, and especially for Obama. At Journolist, news reporters collaborated with open partisans to craft talking points to champion Obama and his agenda.

In September 2008, for example, when McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate, Journolist participants strategized about how to poison Palin's candidacy.

Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation wrote that Obama's "non-official campaign" would need to mount a coordinated attack. "This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn't say -- very hard-hitting stuff ... scare people about having this ... right-wing Christian wing-nut a heartbeat away." He exhorted fellow J-listers to "bang away at McCain's age."

Time's Joe Klein linked to his own article on Palin -- partly drawn, he said, from Journolist brainstorming. "Here's my attempt to incorporate the accumulated wisdom of this august list-serve community," he wrote, calling Palin's ideology "militant."

In April 2008, when ABC News raised the issue of Obama's 20-year relationship with antiwhite radical Rev. Jeremiah Wright, many J-listers immediately sensed a threat to an Obama victory. They urged their compatriots to bury the story and to attack any journalist who might consider covering it.

"What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left," exhorted Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent. He advocated racial smears: "Take one of them -- Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists. ... This makes them 'sputter' with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction."

Many J-listers routinely flaunted their political biases. David Weigel -- a blogger who covered conservative politics for the Washington Post -- maligned conservatives as racists and "morons." After Rush Limbaugh was hospitalized, Weigel expressed a wish for his death. An NPR affiliate's news producer chimed in that Limbaugh's death would make her "laugh ... like a maniac."

Is Journolist a smoking gun that reveals a grand liberal media conspiracy? I don't think so. In my years as a journalist, I've concluded that bias is largely the product of the insular, cloistered world in which most media people move. When nearly everyone around you shares your worldview, groupthink is the inevitable result.

Media people, like the rest of us, also covet "insider" status -- they want to be part of the club. Often, that can mean snickering together at conservatives like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin while treating a liberal icon like Keith Ellison with kid gloves."

KK takes on the Morroco Ambassador

Here's some of the article:

"Minneapolis lawyer Sam Kaplan -- a DFL fundraiser extraordinaire -- was a member of Barack Obama's national campaign-finance committee. In 2009, Obama rewarded him by naming him ambassador to Morocco.

The exotic posting must have seemed a plum job. Morocco has been known as an oasis among Arab nations -- largely free of the repression that mars so many other Muslim countries. It's "the opportunity of a lifetime for a guy from Minnesota," Kaplan enthused to the Star Tribune in April.

But since Kaplan's arrival, Morocco has turned from a diplomatic dream job to a depressing despotic reality. Since March, it has expelled about 100 foreigners, including 50 U.S. citizens. Among the deportees were foster parents at an orphanage, businesspeople and aid workers who taught the poor to grow their own food.

Their crime? Christian "proselytizing" -- against the law in this Muslim monarchy.

On June 17, some deportees told their heart-wrenching stories at a hearing convened by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va, cochairman of Congress's Human Rights Commission.

Witnesses included Eddie and Lynn Padilla, foster parents at Village of Hope orphanage. The orphanage -- which has both Christian and Muslim staff -- cared for 33 abandoned children and had operated for 10 years with official approval. But in March, the police moved in and swept through children's bedrooms while they slept, searching for Christian literature.

After three days of grilling, the Padillas and others were given two hours to clear out, as their children sobbed in anguish. Though no evidence was presented, their assets were seized and their bank accounts frozen. Since their departure, there is evidence that some children have been beaten or drugged.

Witness Michael Cloud, also a Christian, founded 12 centers that treat Moroccan children with cerebral palsy. Cloud testified that authorities barred his reentry as he tried to return from Egypt (where his wife was being treated for cancer). He was held for 13 hours and deported with no explanation. The "hard work" of 14 years was lost, he stated.

So how's our man Sam Kaplan doing defending American citizens from these egregious human-rights violations?

The Padillas testified that the U.S. Embassy had no time for them during their ordeal: "They just told us, "Do what they are telling you to do.' They offered no help ... [or] any kind of counsel, just pack and go." Cloud testified that when he sought help, the embassy just gave him a list of lawyers.

At the hearing, international-law expert Sandra Bunn-Livingstone stated that despite victims' pleas, Kaplan refused to release a Moroccan government diplomatic note with a list of deportees, citing protocol. As a result, "Americans who would like to appeal under Moroccan law ... have been refused that right" since they lack written proof of expulsion, she said. The British and Canadian governments did hand over such notes, she added.

Perhaps Kaplan had other priorities. "A few weeks ago," Cloud testified, "the American embassy in Rabat brought Moroccans to Washington, D.C., and fed them and housed them to help them brainstorm on how to build businesses in the Muslim world."

That would make sense. According to the embassy website, Kaplan's goal as ambassador is "to help fulfill President Obama's vision of a new beginning for U.S. relations with the Muslim world based on mutual respect and ... mutual interest."

In April, Kaplan responded to critics. He told the Star Tribune he had released a statement saying that the embassy was "distressed" by the expulsions. "We hope to see meaningful improvements in the application of due process," he wrote.

What's Kaplan doing to alleviate distress and promote due process?

A top priority seems to be to impress the Moroccan media, which complained that his statement had "stepped over the diplomatic line," according to the Star Tribune. "When your press has been almost unanimously positive for 5 1/2 months, the change is something that is different," Kaplan explained.

Cozy relations with the Moroccan monarchy are another priority. According to the Star Tribune, "Kaplan noted that King Mohammed has spoken about judicial reform in the past."

"We're not speaking out in contrast to what the government has said," Kaplan told the paper. "We're simply joining with His Majesty and saying if we can be helpful, we'd like to do that."

Wolf rejects this. "An American embassy should be an island of freedom" in the country where it's located, vigorously advocating for its citizens, he says. "Every ambassador has to decide whether to represent Americans' interests in the country they're in or whether to represent the country they're in to America.""

The entire article is posted here:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/99142164.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:Ug8P:Pc:UiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

Katherine Kersten is a Twin Cities writer and speaker. Reach her at kakersten@gmail.com.