Beggars

I experience a problem of conscience every time I pass by a beggar without giving him or her something. I’ve shared this personal phenomenon with you, here in my blog, before.
by Charlie Leck

Let me share my Rilke reading* for today. It is very brief. It is called Beggars…

“The shapeless heaps turn out to be beggars.
  They reveal themselves as you pass by.
  They are selling the nothing
   their hands hold out.”

*from Rilke’s New Poems
as published in A Year with Rilke
translated and edited by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows

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So Long! It’s Been Good to Know You!

I may as well fold up the ollld blog. Who am I going to bash now that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has decided to give up her seat in Congress – that is, when January 2014 rolls around? Unless, of course, she has other ideas!
by Charlie Leck

Now Congresswoman Bachmann is saying that eight years is good enough for anyone. It is not, she emphasizes, that she’s afraid of her Democratic opponent in an election next year. And, she also assures us, it has nothing to do with the possibility of charges of campaign misconduct having to do with her Iowa presidential primary activities in 2012.

No, dang it! Of course not!

I’ll tell you what!
If Michele Bachmann sticks to her guns and leaves Congress and stays out of politics, I’ll hang up my spurs as well. On her last day in Congress, I’ll write my final blog here. With Ms. Bachmann gone, my blood pressure will go down and so will most of my reasons to rant, rave and rage.

Unless, that is…
I have no idea who will ascend to represent Minnesota’s sixth district in Congress. Only the election of an idiot like Tom Emmer, who happens to live in the sixth district, could get me to renege on my promise to stop blogging. And, Emmer is being talked about as one of the possible candidates to replace the congresswoman. I’d like to think that Emmer is unelectable but I’m afraid it may not be true in the sixth district – and only in the sixth.

So, even though Bachmann has pledged to leave Congress, we need Graves to stick to his promise to run for the seat. I think he would have beaten Bachmann (and frankly, I think that’s why she’s retiring) and I think he can defeat Emmer in a head-to-head fight.

The two zaniest Republicans in the state…
You know, from what I’ve written here, that I have little regard for either Bachmann or Emmer. They are the two weirdest Republicans in the state. They are both equally flakey and they both lack any sort of cleverness. I think Emmer would end up being even a greater embarrassment to the state than Bachmann has been.

So, stay tuned and I’ll try to keep you up-to-date on what’s going to happen in Minnesota’s sixth congressional district. The first thing I’ll watch for are hints that Emmer might be making a run for it. I have reasonable Republican friends who will keep me posted on Emmer’s intentions.

Tom Emmer cost the Minnesota Republican Party the governorship in 2012 and if, by some strange set of circumstances, he should get to run for congress, I believe he’ll do the same thing in that race by splitting his party again.

If the Republican Party is smart they’ll look for some kind of moderately conservative candidate out there in the sixth district – for a person who will have a more reasonable approach than did Michele Bachmann.

Now, one final possibility…
Could it be? Would she dare? Has Ms. Bachmann the idea that she might take a run for the U.S. Senate and oppose Al Franken in his 2014 bid for reelection? OMG! That would mean intensifying my blogging efforts rather than discontinuing them. Is it possible? What we have learned is that with her anything is possible.

If you’d like to watch the You Tube Video of Ms. Bachmann’s statement about her retirement, you can do so here…

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We Don’t Need No War No More!

John McCain has returned from a somewhat secretive trip to Syria. His Lordship found the rebels wanting and in need of weapons (serious and powerful weapons). He’s telling us all that the U.S. must send such weapons pronto!
by Charlie Leck

“But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” [James 3:17]

America, in the last 50 years has racked up meaningless and unnecessary war after war – from Vietnam to Iraq. Many of them have been built upon lies or, at best, serious miscalculations and erroneous information.

We don’t need another war!

John McCain, the U.S. Senator from Arizona and former presidential candidate, seems to think we do. Oh, I know, he’s only calling upon us to supply weapons for the citizen rebels in Syria.

A friend of mine once said: “Things begin where we thought they ended and we often do not recognize the beginnings until historians explain them.”

Korea was not a war. It was a police-action. They told us again and again. Tanks, fighter-jets, battleships and aircraft carriers and thousands of dead soldiers, taken together, says “war” to me. Almost 40,000 Americans died in battle in Korea.

Neither did we declare war in Cuba, Vietnam, Granada, Kuwait, Iraq or Afghanistan. We only supplied air support in Libya.

The steps that lead to war are often untraceable. The rising and falling tides of time erase and wash away the tracks upon the shores of distant lands.

We cannot fight every battle. Such erodes our spirits. Each misstep increases the numbers of our enemies and the future dangers we must face.

Should we supply weapons to the militant rebels in Syria we shall have taken a side. Many wise people are estimating that 10 to 20 percent of that weaponry will pass into the hands of radicals and terrorists.

Why not let other nations lead the fighting in this instance? Why can’t other nations supply weapons and equipment of war to the rebels?

Resist, Mr. President, with all your might. We don’t need no more war no more!

As the lyrics to Bob Marley’s song go…

Trouble we don't need (we don't need),
(We don't need) Lord, knows! -
We don't need no more war (no more trouble).
No more trouble - we don't need no more - more trouble!

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The Art of the Letter

I determined at about the turn of the year this winter that I would try to write a letter (a real, personal letter on stationery and put into an envelope with a real and attractive postage stamp) nearly each and every day during 2013.
by Charlie Leck

I’ve come quite close to keeping my vow to each day write a real letter to someone during 2013. It has been a pleasant and pleasurable exercise. In two cases it has caused friends to begin answering each of the letters with personal and even extremely thoughtful letters of their own. What a pleasure it is to pull open a real letter again! It is an art form that has nearly disappeared.

It is an exercise you might want to try for yourself. Don’t be as radical as I and commit to one each day, but think about writing one each week. Make them thoughtful and carefully written letters – ones you would have been pleased to submit to your creative writing instructor in high school or college. You will find something very purifying in the exercise.

For instance, one of the friends to whom I regularly write replied this week with an astonishingly beautiful letter. Let me include a couple of paragraphs here (changing only a name or two to protect the writer’s identity) so you can see how lovely such letters can sometimes be (more beautiful by far, I think, than the dashed-out emails we are accustomed to writing these days).

“I’m writing to you in the early evening… and my plan for this letter included a lot of pleasant stuff about a little road trip I took with Daniel… and all the really good stuff that comes and goes in my life. But for the last couple of hours I’ve been watching the network coverage of the tornado disaster in Moore, OK. And now they’ve accounted for over 50 deaths – too many of them school kids. And I’ve got to tell you, I can’t watch this and keep it together. I see ordinary folks lose everything meaningful in their lives… in a matter of minutes, and it tears me up – and partly it’s because I don’t feel entitled to or deserving of the way my life has turned out. But it’s also that no one – no ordinary person – deserves that kind of loss.

“There’s a Yiddish word that come to mind a lot lately… it’s nachis and it means that warm, rich glow you get when you think about your family – especially your kids and their kids, your real wealth.

“Yesterday, Daniel and I got back from spending every waking minute of the last five days together. Almost all of that time was spent talking and laughing about our 45 years together… and how we got here. Not so much about where we’re going, but where we’ve been. Put it all together and you can’t figure out how it happened… how come it wasn’t a disaster… how come we have so much to laugh about and wonder about. You know, we didn’t spend any of that time wondering what would have made it better. Maybe that’s ‘cause some of the big, bad stuff is so obvious… and yet I’m not willing to bet that today or tomorrow would be any better if I had the chance to edit/re-do thirty or forty of those years. I’ll take it the way it turned out – even without reading the last chapter… yet!”

That was charming – and so was the rest of the letter – and it made my evening last night and I awoke this morning still thinking about it.

I cherish the time I spend writing these letters to family and friends. I’d quite forgotten about what it is like to get a real letter in the mail, to cut it open, and to sit down in a comfortable chair to read it, thinking about it as one finishes the letter. This morning I picked up the letter that arrived yesterday and reread it. I wondered if one would have given such remarkable thought to these experiences if one hadn’t taken the time to thoughtfully, and with care, write them down.

Oh, my! Bring back the personal letter!

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The Buddha in Glory

A blogger friend – one I’ve never met in person but with whom I share a blogging enjoyment – is fond of the Buddha and his wisdom.
by Charlie Leck

I’ve told you before that I’m reading, on a daily basis, A Year with Rilke (a collection of Rainer Maria Rilke’s writings put together by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows). Today’s reading, “The Buddha in Glory,” is from New Poems…

“Center of all centers, innermost core,
almond sweetening in its self-embrace –
all of this, out to the stars,
is the fruit of your body. We greet you.

You feel how little clings to you now.
Endlessness is your shell,
and there, too, the strength.
It is summoned by the radiance

of the full and glowing suns
that wheel around you.
Yet those stars will be outlasted
by what you have begun.”

I’ve been enriched by these Rilke readings. Santa left this small book beneath the tree this past Christmas. A wise man, this Santa! As for Rilke, he’s no Milton, Yates or even Dylan Thomas, but he is complex and mysterious and I find myself enchanted by his thinking. I keep reminding myself that I am reading him in translation and he was likely even better in his original language. Translations usually slaughter poetry. I’ve tried to read a few of the poems in the original German (it’s too tough for me after all these years).

Tony Rugare, in Cleveland, blogs almost daily. He writes what he feels like writing and it seems so often that he feels what he writes quite strongly. He’s a quiet, wise sort of fellow and I think the Buddha has had some significant impact on him. Whenever I think of Tony, I see the traditional image of the Buddha in my mind – so much so that I had to sit down here and do the above computerized etching of Tony to remind me what he really looks like. I’ve added meeting Tony and having a beer with him to my bucket list. Getting to Cleveland oughtn’t be that difficult. Maybe when the Twins are there to play a ball game or two at Jacob Field.

Keep your eye on him (Tony, Rilke, the Buddha -- or all three of them). You might also have some fun along the way.

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Tiger & Sergio

This blog isn’t here for me to write about golf – but sometimes golf has a social connection to it and at this moment it does and it isn’t pretty.
by Charlie Leck

Sergio and Tiger apparently don’t like each other. Tiger, to his credit, tries to keep it (the dislike) at least in the civil range. Very recently, Sergio let it all slip into the nasty area and it made me sad; for, after all, this is supposed to be a gentleman’s game.

As the Huffington Post reported it…

“The British newspaper The Guardian reported Garcia was asked in jest if he would invite Woods to dinner during the U.S. Open.

“The Guardian reported Garcia said: ‘We will have him round every night. We will serve fried chicken.’”

Ooops!
Now, let’s give Sergio the benefit of the doubt… as a Spanish fellow – a Catalan – he might not know how touchy that remark is in America. Yet, he was quick to apologize when he realized he had spoken poorly…

"I apologise for any offence that may have been caused by my comment on stage during The European Tour Players' Awards dinner. I answered a question that was clearly made towards me as a joke with a silly remark, but in no way was the comment meant in a racist manner."

A lot of golfers have had trouble liking everyone else on the golfing tour. There are just some guys (or women) you are bound not to like, but the practice has been to keep it quiet and out of the news. Sergio Garcia has broken that code wide open and has let his dislike for Tiger Woods spill out into plain view. Too bad! Sergio is a good guy, but he is easily distracted and the distractions hurt his golf game. He has now got a big time distraction.

A way out?
Come on over here and win the U.S. Open that starts in just a few weeks, Sergio. And at the award ceremonies offer your apologies to Tiger and suggest that you both bury the hatchet and start all over in building a relationship. Your both too good to act like brats! Stop it!

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Buzzfeed

When you are an old timer, such as I, you catch on to these high tech things rather slowly. I still haven’t caught on to Facebook and don’t understand for a second what the big fuss is all about. I do my facebooking every morning, over coffee, with my wife. Now there’s Buzzfeed; and I’m giving it a try.
by Charlie Leck

So, how far behind the times am I? I am hopelessly behind. For instance, I just found out about Buzzfeed yesterday and, of course, that’s an elementary (kindergarten) approach for most people. I mean people are talking about Smart TVs soon being obsolete and I don’t even know what they are yet. The fellow who installed my DVR (I don’t know what the letters stand for) and my Blue Ray player told me I was now equipped to receive programming via wi-fi on my TV (whatever that means). Of course, he also mentioned that my “provider” would probably have to increase my “connection speeds” to “10 to 15 megabits” for me to use it effectively. My speeds, he said, are good enough for things like Hulu (what?), it isn’t good enough for “streaming high-definition.”

It was quite enough for me to venture over to Buzzfeed yesterday. Once there, I had to go to a its “help page” (“How to use Buzzfeed”) to try to figure out what it was all about.

So, this is a great one (I just found it on Buzzfeed yesterday): George Bernard Shaw sent a message to Winston Churchill: “Have reserved two tickets for opening night. Come and bring a friend, if you have one.”

Churchill then replied: “Impossible to come to first night. Will come to second night, if you have one.”

I would not want to get into a cat fight with Churchill. Here’s another little repartee…

Lady Astor sent him a message saying: “Winston, if you were my husband, I’d put poison in your coffee.”

And, Churchill replied: “Nancy, if you were my wife, I’d drink it.”

So (don’t you just hate people who begin every paragraph with the word “so?”), just what the heck is Buzzfeed anyway? Well, it starts off as a web site and it has a help page designed to assist one such as I in using the web site. I felt very stupid that I had to go to that “help page.”

So, how the hell did I even get on to Buzzfeed? Well, I was listening to Minnesota Public Radio yesterday and there was this wonderful interview of Slate’s editor-in-chief, David Plotz, and he had great praise for Buzzfeed. As I listened to him, I said to myself: “What the hell is Buzzfeed?” [P.S. I got hooked on Slate four or five years ago and I’m a very frequent visitor to that news site.]

You see, about this Buzzfeed thing, it was almost as if a friend had called me up and said: “Why aren’t you using email? Email is really cool and I think you’d be good at it!” It was as if Mr. Plotz was talking directly to me during his interview yesterday, telling me Buzzfeed was made just for me. Now, however, just like Facebook, my dilemma is this: “Okay, here I am! Now just what do I do?”

I decided I needed to begin on this Buzzfeed slowly. Once, I jumped right into Facebook cold turkey and it went very badly – so badly they I had to go into anger management treatment as a result. Facebook and I don’t get along – unless I come upon one of sweet Laurence’s wonderful contributions that make me so happy that I go through all the rest of the useless stuff people put up there just so I can find her postings (I’m really sorry if I’m offending anyone. It’s something that I do quite frequently and then I always feel terrible about it afterward – or afterword). Laurence is a French woman and you know how the French women are – ooh, la, la! And, if you knew her like I know her, you’d be willing to fight your way through Facebook posts to get to her too.

So, this is my Buzzfeed game plan. For awhile, I’m going to just visit Buzzfeed every day and see what its citizen reporters are reporting on – turning in, as I understand it, items they find on many parts of the web and sometimes posting scoops about crazy things someone did on the web or said on the web – could be just a written report or it might be a video. I guess some of these Buzzfeed contributors sometime win little badges of honor and thus notoriety. The rules are simple – like, don’t post porn and don’t try to plug your own blog or commercial products or you’ll be banned forever from the Kingdom of Buzzfeed.

Some fellow posted this wonderful repartee of Winston Churchill that I’ve quoted here today. Wonderful stuff. It’ll draw me back to Buzzfeed a couple of times. I may find it’s nothing but a bunch of poppycock. If so I’ll let you know.

So, Bessie Braddock, a Member of Parliament, said to Winston Churchill: “Winston, you are drunk!”

Church replied to Ms. Braddock: “You’re right, Bessie. And you’re ugly. But tomorrow morning, I’ll be sober.”

Ooh!

I’ll just add this little note about what I found this morning on Buzzfeed about Facebook…
33 Ways Facebook Ruins Your Life (check it out).

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Once in a while, tired of the daily paper and the constant haranguing it brings, I must rely on better sources to fill me up (re-energize myself) and get me going again.
by Charlie Leck

I read this yesterday in my daily Rilke readings (taken from the Ninth Duino Elegy) and I liked it very much…

“A hunger drives us.
We want to contain it all in our naked hands,
our brimming senses, our speechless hearts.
We want to become it, or offer it – but to whom?
We could hold it forever – but, after all,
what can we keep? Not the beholding,
so slow to learn. Not anything that has happened here.
Nothing. There are hurts. And, always, the hardships.
And there’s the long knowing of love – all of it
unsayable. Later, amidst the stars, we will see:
these are better unsaid.”

It’s a nice break (no?) from the daily head-slaps that we get from the newspapers – especially on this day following the horrible storm in Oklahoma and the sorrow that the reports are bringing.

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The Scandal that Wasn’t

I have a feeling – a feeling, mind you – that the current IRS/Tea Party scandal is going to turn out to be a mighty flapping of buttock cheeks as air escapes through them.
by Charlie Leck

As it often does, the New York Times put some of its best reporters on a big story! The newspaper wanted a careful look at the current talk of scandal inside the IRS having to do with various Tea Party groups’ applications for non-profit (charity) status. A story in this morning’s NY Times is well worth your attention. It may make you shake your head. Further, you may sit back and ask “what scandal?” It made me ask: Why were people fired over this?

Nicholas Confessore, David Kocieniewski and Michael Luo were the writers on the story. It was first filed yesterday [18 May 2013] but appears in a more complete fashion in this morning’s paper.

A statement, quoting Phillip Hackney, a former IRS Tax Lawyer who now teaches law at Louisiana State University (LSU), kind of sums up the entire and very long article…

“We’re talking about an office (Cincinnati) overwhelmed by 60,000 paper applications trying to find efficient means of dealing with that.”

Applications to the IRS for non-profit status went through the Cincinnati office. Following what I have often called here “the utterly stupid ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court” on political contributions by corporations and political fund raisers (Citizens United), the stream of applications to the IRS increased to an enormous level. The specialists in Cincinnati who looked at these applications were not exactly highly trained and not at all fully qualified to make decisions about these matters without technical advice from Washington.

In this you have the beginning of a non-scandal scandal. Poor schmucks in Cincinnati were trying to do their work at a terrific pace. They wanted to make sure everything was on the up-and-up and they worked hard to do it. Did they make mistakes? Probably? Were they working for the White House in an attempt to stop conservative groups from organizing to raise money to elect Mitt Romney to the White House? I don’t thiiiiink so!

The resulting clap was so seriously loud and forceful that it gently and momentarily lifted the entire roof off the church.

Cancel the call for Woodward and Bernstein! What we have here is not a scandal but just one more example of government inefficiency.

Believe me, the majority of Republicans are not going to let it go so easily. We’ll need to spend millions upon millions on an investigation and in committee hearings designed to provide a stage for congressional representatives who will be running for office in 2014.

I suggest you just crank up the old computer this morning and get on over to this New York Times article and find out for yourself what went wrong in Cincinnati.

Here are some highlights from the article…

“Overseen by a revolving cast of midlevel managers, stalled by miscommunication with I.R.S. lawyers and executives in Washington and confused about the rules they were enforcing, the Cincinnati specialists flagged virtually every application with Tea Party in its name. But their review went beyond conservative groups: more than 400 organizations came under scrutiny, including at least two dozen liberal-leaning ones and some that were seemingly apolitical...”

“…I think that what happened here was that foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection,” Mr. [Steven) Miller [former IRS Commissioner] testified before a House committee Friday. While “intolerable,” he said, it “was not an act of partisanship...”

“..But the Exempt Organizations Division — concentrated in Cincinnati with fewer than 200 workers, according to I.R.S. officials — is staffed mostly with accountants, clerks and civil servants. Working for one of only three I.R.S. divisions not charged with collecting tax revenue, specialists in the Determinations Unit in Cincinnati primarily review and process roughly 70,000 applications for exemptions each year, relatively few from groups engaged in election activity…”

“…It is not unusual for I.R.S. specialists to search for patterns in applications, in part for clues toward fraud and scams — a single tax preparer employing the same tax gambit for multiple clients, for example — and in part to ensure that similar groups are treated in a consistent way, the former officials said…”

“…Some former agency officials and outside advocates said they worried about the chilling effect the controversy could have on legitimate enforcement. Even as the agency was scrutinizing small nonprofit organizations, critics say, it appears to have done little to crack down on large 501(c)4 groups that spent at least half a billion dollars on political advertising during the last four years, some in seeming defiance of the I.R.S. rules. Efforts by the agency to clarify those tax rules — a potential first step toward curbing abuses — began last summer but are still in the early stages…

These excerpts should not be regarded as the summation of a very serious, complex, unbiased and lengthy article.

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Time for Woodward and Bernstein

It’s time for a Woodward and Bernstein team – or for a team like Woodward and Bernstein.
by Charlie Leck

I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in front of the telly in the early seventies – ’73, to be exact – when I should have been out, productively working. I caught the Watergate disease and became fascinated with the extraordinarily colorful Senator Same Erving. On those days when I had to beat the streets, making my calls, I tried to have dinner in front of the television so I could watch the public television replays of the day's hearings, when the Senate committee chaired by Erving delved into the whole murky Watergate affair.

I don’t think many of you who remember the times will disagree with me when I give credit to those two young, energetic reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein, for breaking open the entire mess and bringing down the President and all his men. I don’t know where the whole investigation might have gone had it not for those two tenacious guys.

Woodward and Bernstein set out to find out what the President knew about the whole, rotten business and when he knew it. I’ve read their book, All the President’s Men, a number of times and I’m always fascinated by it. It would take us nearly 35 years to find out who Deep Throat was! Remember?

Enough reminiscing about those days! I’ve written about them here before. Now I just want to say we need another Woodward and Bernstein – or perhaps they need to team up again and find out for us just what has happened in the whole IRS vs the Tea Party Scandal.

I’m here to admit that it is messy and that it was wrong! However, I’m not yet ready to admit the President had a hand in it. If he did, the nation needs to know just how and how much he was involved.

No one has supported or cheered for the President more than I; yet I must know, beyond question, that he is innocent and unstained by the shameful actions of the Internal Revenue Service. It isn’t that the validity of their applications for non-profit status should not have been investigated; it is just that Tea Party organizations should not have been investigated while such organizations in the center and left of the political spectrum were ignored while doing the same thing. Is that what really happened? We must know! Was the President aware? We must have the answer! If so, when was he aware and what did he do about it? Every American needs to know – every American of all political persuasions!

We must not allow Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and her type to make these damning accusations if they are not true. She has no idea whether they are or not! She is merely a dunce! The U.S. Senate must find out the truth and report it clearly to the American people; and they need a leader as tenacious and honest as was Sam Irving. (You children don’t know about him, but we old geezers will never forget him. Nor will we ever forget Woodward and Bernstein! Bring them on again!)

I should only add that I am not afraid of the truth on this one.
There is a world of difference between Richard Nixon and Barack Obama!

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I Blogged My Heart Out Yesterday

I am avoiding this scandal in Washington, when I ought to be confronting it and writing about it. I wrote, instead, a strange blog yesterday, meaning to post it today. It was far too intimate and personal and revealed some of the little problems my aging has brought along. Who cares? That is what I finally asked and then I set aside the blog, putting it instead in my daily journal. I must write about this stink in our nation’s capitol! Why am I avoiding it?
by Charlie Leck

“Sit! Write,” I told myself!

There are politicians comparing it to Watergate? Watergate! Do you remember Watergate and the slime of it?... how it brought down the President and labeled him a criminal forever after?

I am like the proverbial ostrich! I do not want to face this – not the slightest possibility that my president could be involved in anything so awful. He is not! I am certain! He could not sink so low as Richard Nixon did!

Yet, of course, Republicans are running around, happily, and comparing this current dust-up to Watergate!

I do not believe it for a second! I realize something went terribly wrong, but I do not believe it was orchestrated from or by the White House – though all the motive in the world seems there for this administration to do such a thing. The constant frustration brought on by the Tea Party types. Those inside the White House must have asked myriad times about whether the far right might be raising funds illegally to oppose the President’s actions. Why not loose the FBI and the IRS on them – the dirty bastards? Yet, I cannot believe this president – this man – could be capable of such a misuse of power. However, the Republicans will make it seem so! They have an important mid-term election coming up in 2014. What a body blow it would be to the Democrats if the nation suspects them of such foul play. Just the hint of a stink – or the unlikeliest suspicion – would be enough for the Republicans to win back both houses by a wide margin.

As I think about it, is this not motive enough to cause scoundrels to create such images of a president gone bad. Oh, Lord, not Obama! I cannot believe it of him. I will not!

Who knew what and when?
Of course, President Obama must act with immediate efficiency to lay bare all that went wrong. What was happening at the IRS? We must know every detail and how such things began – who knew what and when did they know it? Remember than constant tune from the Watergate scandal?

There can be nothing hidden! Everything must be open to the inspection of the American people as well as the Congress.

I will write a number of times in the next few days about the scandal in Washington and who is behind it. Full disclosure!

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Free at Last! Free at Last!

I listened to a good many of the comments and debate from the Minnesota Senate on Monday regarding the new marriage law. I was often touched and moved – by both Republicans and Democrats – by those who planned to vote against the proposed law and by those who would vote for it.
by Charlie Leck

When the vote was taken, I was in my car driving along in busy afternoon traffic. Just as I realized the bill had passed and it was announced on the radio, I heard car horns honking all around me. The Monday afternoon rush hour turned into a celebration for a good number of the drivers who were headed home from work. I began tapping my horn with the other drivers.

On the radio, I could hear the general celebration in the Minnesota capital building. It was quite loud and very joyous. The sounds were echoing around in the big, open structure, bouncing off the walls and cascading here and there.

Minnesota will, beginning on August 1, allow gay and lesbian marriage. We are the first Midwestern state to allow such marriages. I am a very happy and proud Minnesotan. I have friends who will take advantage of the new law and I am very, very joyful for them. I called one of them to share the news. Of course, he had been listening carefully on public radio and knew what had happened. He said that he and his partner had been hugging and dancing ever since the vote tally was announced.

I called one of the organizers of the political strategy to get this bill voted into law, to congratulate him. His phone was busy and his voice mail was jammed. I sent him a text message instead.

I was stymied in my attempts to contact any of the other happy friends who were so impacted by this new law. So, I turned instead to the magnificent but mysterious big-guy who oversees the planet. I gave him the thumbs-up and the biggest smile I could muster.

“Great goin’, I said. “You did good! Real good!”

On a freeway overpass, under which I drove, a group of young fellows were waving and dancing with wild happiness, waving rainbow banners. Cars were honking at them in congratulations.

People interviewed on the radio were saying things like… “This is how it feels to be equal… to be a full citizen.”

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”

It was a wonderful, extraordinary feeling. Now I sit quietly thinking about the long and difficult journey that’s been made to here.

At 5 p.m. today, at a public ceremony on the steps of the Capital Building, the Governor will sign the bill into law. Freedom! Freedom! I can only imagine that there will be some wonderful parties late this afternoon that will go on into the morning. I’ll just sleep well and peacefully.

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Of the Orderly Transfer of Government

The brilliant and clear-thinking Stanley Fish wrote in his blog on the New York Times that the NRA may indeed be un-American if its proposals lead to a resistance against the orderly transfer of government.
by Charlie Leck

In a blog, posted very recently in the New York Times, Stanley Fish wonders if the NRA might not be Un-American. The blog is very thoughtful and worth reading.

Is the National Rifle Association really inspired by worthy motives when it speaks of its defense of the Second Amendment? This is the question that Fish raises…

“…the desire to set right what has gone terribly wrong. Somehow the forces of evil have gained the levers of power, and unless they are dislodged, the values necessary to the sustaining of everything we cherish will be overwhelmed. Violence is ugly, but if tyranny is to be defeated, it may be necessary. Given tyranny’s resilience and its tendency to fill any available political space, we must always be ready; the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

“..the American tradition of accepting the results of elections — even when they bring with them policies you believe to be misguided at best and disastrous at worst — is in danger of being undermined when groups of armed people decide that the present leadership is infected by unpatriotic, socialist ideas and must be resisted at all costs.”

“Yes, and no,” Fish says to his own question. His comments in between the two teasing quotations I give you above are quite brilliant and extremely worth reading.

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Do Unto Others

You may read it in Greek or Latin; or you may find it in the old King James Version of scripture or the most modern translations, such as “the Word on the Street.” Yet, it will in all ways say the same thing. Nevertheless, we earthly souls would do all that we can to avoid its truth.
by Charlie Leck

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” [Matthew 7:12 King James Version}

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.’” [Matthew 7:12]

In the antebellum south, the white Christian allowed himself to be convinced that the slave was not really a man and therefore the great commandment did not apply in that case.

Even in contemporary times, around the word, we convince ourselves that there are certain people to whom it doesn’t apply – this universal law of all faiths and civilized society.

On a chilly morning, I walk east, across 57th Street in Manhattan, and see a broken man huddled in an entryway to a small retail shop. He is shivering from the cold and he looks hungry and desperate. His eyes meet mine, pleading, and in his I see the one I would call my Lord. When I turn away and walk on I have shown my back to him who calls me to live a just life; and, I have turned my back on my very self.

A small voice asks me the haunting question: “Do you suppose that might have been Jesus – I mean the man lying there homeless and starving? May it have been?”

“In so much as ye have done it unto one of these, the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.”

I have an important breakfast to which I must get immediately. So many significant items are on today’s agenda and I am needed there. I cannot turn back. I am a busy man.

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Same Sex Marriage
On Monday, the Minnesota State Legislature will pass a new law giving those in same sex relationships the right to marry – a man to a man and a woman to a woman. The Governor will sign it immediately into law. The Lord will smile on us. It has taken us a long time to get it right, but we have, Lord. We have.

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Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.