Kautzman's AP GO PO Blog

I sure hope that President Barack Obama and his family enjoyed their week’s vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, because what he faces on his return to Washington is sheer hell.

Obama confronted a daunting situation when he took office back in January, with a sickening economic slide and the real threat of financial crisis. But he was buoyed then by the momentum of his historic election victory and the widespread hope that it stirred – even among those who had not voted for him.

He launched a series of ambitious initiatives and, while only the economic stimulus package came to quick fruition, there was a palpable sense of energy. By late summer, most of that good will has been dissipated, the voters are feeling impatient and irritable, and a sense of stalemate has returned to the capital. Meantime, at home and abroad, deadlines are piling up in a way that will test Obama’s declining supply of political capital.

At least four large gambles are coming due. The first involves his signature domestic program, health care reform. The Senate Finance Committee has asked for an extension to work on its bipartisan compromise until Sept. 15, but the odds against its success have grown mightily.

I badly misjudged the broad public reaction to the angry August congressional town meetings. Instead of provoking a pro-Obama backlash, as I had expected, the town halls, amplified on sometimes hostile cable channels and talk radio, spread disquiet about what the president has in mind. And Obama’s patient, didactic responses have not quieted the reaction, let alone built fresh support for a vitally needed overhaul of our expensive, dysfunctional health system.

With congressional Democrats increasingly divided between moderates nervous about the cost of reform and liberals adamant that it not be compromised, it will take a major presidential push to get this effort back on track. But the early autumn will find Obama more than distracted by growing challenges in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, the early stages of the stand-down of American troops have led to an upsurge of violence, casting serious doubt about the capacity of Iraqi forces to maintain the peace. And as Obama’s promised troop withdrawal by September 2010 draws closer, the warring factions inside Iraq have become bolder. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government is beset by challenges, and the man in whom the United States has invested so much may not survive the coming parliamentary elections in power.

Iran is an even greater problem. Obama has given Tehran until Sept. 15 to respond to his offer of talks about their nuclear ambitions, but there is no sign that the hard-line government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will accommodate Obama or do anything more than seek delays while the centrifuges spin. Iran is stirring trouble and gaining influence in Iraq. Its leaders clearly think time is on their side.

It looks likely that Obama will be forced to mount a major diplomatic offensive at the United Nations, particularly with Russia and China, to bring the Iranians into line. And there is no guarantee he can succeed.

Finally, there is Afghanistan. The election outcome is in doubt, and the U.S. hardly knows whether to hope that Hamid Karzai, hip deep in corruption, wins or not. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has confirmed that the struggle with the Taliban and al-Qaida is going badly. Obama’s new commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is likely to ask for even more reinforcements to combat the insurgents, and the Afghan war, which once commanded broad support at home, is increasingly unpopular.

Meantime, an implacable and opportunistic Republican opposition savors the prospect of victories in off-year gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.

As Washington mourns the death of Edward Kennedy, a rested but sobered president faces the toughest times he has yet encountered.

Reaction to Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death suggests that there really are two Americas.

One side sees in Kennedy a liberal lion who fought for the greater good; the other sees a sinner lionized by the morally blind.

How can one man be viewed so differently? Is there no objective truth, or is all truth filtered through one’s own projection of reality? Such, perhaps, is the dilemma in a secularized world bereft of common reference points. You got your gig; I got mine.

Even before Kennedy’s motorcade had come to a stop in front of the JFK Library on Thursday, conservatives were busy circulating an old GQ profile written by Michael Kelly, the beloved columnist and Atlantic editor who died in Iraq. Kelly painted a complicated portrait of a flawed man, but what stood out most were Kennedy’s less-attractive behaviors, especially toward women.

While the left remembers Kennedy for his fight for the common man, the right remembers him as responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne 40 years ago. Nothing about Kennedy’s decades of public service could erase the shadow of that early morning when Kennedy drove his car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick and abandoned the scene, leaving his passenger to drown.

Thus, the tone on the right side of the blogosphere is rather Old Testament, with many expressing delight in the thought that the senator’s final judgment will not be light. Elsewhere, Kennedy fans have exploited the propitious timing of his exit. MoveOn.org urged health care reformers to “re-commit ourselves to achieving the thing that mattered most” to Kennedy. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the senior Senate Democrat, has called for passage of reform in honor of Kennedy “as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals.”

Timing is everything in death as in life, apparently. Indeed, if Pat Robertson and other religious icons of the right were instead liberal, they might be tempted to say that God wants health care reform.

Just as August’s less-than-august health care melees were morphing from shoutfests to fisticuffs, someone changed the channel. Nothing like the gimlet gaze of death to drop the volume and still the masses. Hysteria quickly turns to ruminations on mortality, and perspective is restored. Might we now infer that God is a pro-universal health care liberal?

The answer depends on whether one is the sort to interpret tragedies, deaths and disasters as divine intervention – and whether one’s God is compassionate or judgmental. And, of course, it depends on one’s politics. God, you may have heard, is a conservative, though his Son had some decidedly liberal tendencies.

For reasons that shall be explained in the hereafter, conservatives are more likely to see the hand of God in matters both mundane and sublime. If one were of such mind, is it not possible to believe that Kennedy’s exit was timed to prod America to Do the Right Thing and pass health care reform? Conspiracy theories have been built on much less, and belief in miracles precludes belief in coincidence. Or, does God only act in conservative interests?

A Pat Robertson-type, who (in this fantasy) considers universal health care an act of Christian duty, arguably might view a final curtain on Camelot as a divinely inspired, albeit sad-for-the-family, intervention. Not only could Kennedy’s death be viewed as a clarion call for a providential idea, but on a more practical level, the media would forget all about town halls rather than miss the final episode of America’s dynasty.

There’s always the possibility that conservatives are right and God was removing the single icon whose presence lent energy to legislation that would vastly increase government power in the private sector. Or – and this gets my vote – God is too busy building a better human in a saner galaxy to concern himself with us. Couldn’t blame him.

One can’t help wondering, nonetheless, how those same Old Testament celebrants would have treated Kennedy had he, as recompense for his sins, embarked on a crusade against abortion and same-sex marriage instead of for universal health care. My modest guess is that they would have found a way to forgive him and insisted that a man’s worst moment is not the sum of his life.

Kennedy’s life was indeed a mixed sack of good works and sometimes-deplorable behavior. A charitable person would hope that he found peace at the end of his life. An observant person might note, without pleasure, that even in death, it’s all politics.

They called him “The Liberal Lion.” Ted Kennedy deserved that title, though with some asterisks added. There’s no reconciling Kennedy worshippers with the Kennedy haters. But those who can deal with shades of gray will pay tribute to the legendary Massachusetts senator who championed landmark legislation through bipartisan cooperation – but whose sense of family privilege didn’t always serve the interests of democracy.

No one can deny Kennedy’s contributions. He pushed through the Civil Rights Act, Freedom of Information Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Through his odd-couple relationship with Utah conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch, Kennedy helped win major AIDS legislation. And we hope that his four-decade crusade to extend health coverage to all Americans will end in victory this year.

Less commendable was the senator’s penchant for capitalizing on Kennedy nostalgia to further family interests. Ted’s three brothers died young and under tragic circumstances. Joe fell heroically in World War II. Two brothers, President John F. Kennedy and New York Sen. Bobby Kennedy, were assassinated. Kennedy used the powerful brew of public emotion to fuel unwarranted political ambition.

Ted did not create the Kennedy Dynasty: While he was in diapers, his father Joe was already long on the project. True democrats (with a small “d”) frown on the notion of ruling families, but Ted tirelessly worked the “Kennedy mystique” to advance himself and kin.

After Bobby died, Ted made this claim to the presidency: “Like my brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard.” That would have been a fine speech for a Shakespearean prince assuming his father’s throne. But it should have troubled a country born out of opposition to hereditary rule more than it did.

Then Chappaquiddick happened, and the closest he would ever come to the presidency was a 1980 protest challenge against incumbent Jimmy Carter. Questions still swirl around Kennedy’s conduct that night, when he drove a car off a bridge and a female passenger drowned. That and his expulsion from Harvard for cheating on a test would have ended most political careers, but Kennedy had the family name to propel him into a 47-year tenure in the Senate.

Kennedy subsequently “placed” his son Patrick into a House seat from Rhode Island. Patrick is a very appealing person, but his serial problems with drugs and alcohol – crises that continue – should have disqualified him for this kind of responsibility.

Earlier this year, Kennedy tried to slip his niece Caroline Kennedy into the New York Senate seat left vacant when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state. Several hard-working New York Democrats were already vying for that office. Caroline had never run for anything and proved herself temperamentally unsuited for the rough-and-tumble. Still, it was startling to see an airhead faction of the Democratic elite so eager to throw their longtime public servants overboard for Kennedy sparkle.

In the year since Ted’s dire diagnosis, Massachusetts Democrats have been pondering which Kennedy will take his Senate seat, as though the voters have little to do with it. “According to local conventional wisdom,” writes Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe, Bobby’s son Joe “has the right of first refusal.” (Tom Paine must be turning in his grave.)

America was founded on ideas, not royal families. That’s why recent talk of lawmakers voting for health care reform as “a tribute to Ted Kennedy” is so off base. Congress should pass it because the legislation would be good for the country. And if in doing so, they wish to praise Kennedy’s fine ideas and hard work in creating the reforms, that would be entirely appropriate.

May the good that Ted Kennedy has done live after him.

Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead. The 1,000-page monstrosity that emerged in various editions from Congress was done in by widespread national revulsion not just at its expense and intrusiveness but at the mendacity with which it is being sold. You don’t need a Ph.D. to see that the promise to expand coverage and reduce costs is a crude deception, or that cutting $500 billion from Medicare without affecting care is a fiction.

But there is an exit strategy. And a politically clever one, if the Democrats are smart enough to seize it.

(1) Forget the public option. Whatever the merits, and they are few, it is political poison. It dies by the Liasson Logic, the unassailable observation by NPR’s Mara Liasson that there are no liberal Democrats who will lose their seats if the public option is left out, while there are many moderate Democrats who could lose their seats if the public option is included.

(2) Jettison any reference to end-of-life counseling. People see (correctly) such Medicare-paid advice as subtle encouragement to voluntarily refuse treatment. People don’t want government involvement in a process they consider the private province of patient, family and doctor. The Senate is already dropping it. The House must follow.

(3) Soft-pedal the idea of government committees determining “best practices.” President Obama’s Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research was sold as simply government helping doctors choose the best treatments. But there are dozens of medical journal review articles that do just that. The real purpose of FCCCER is ultimately to establish official criteria for denying reimbursement to less favored (because presumably less effective) treatments – precisely the triage done by the NICE committee in Britain, the Orwellian body that once blocked access to a certain expensive anti-blindness drug until you went blind in one eye.

(4) More generally, abandon the whole idea of Obamacare as cost-cutting. True, it was Obama’s original rationale for creating a whole new entitlement at a time of a sinking economy and a bankrupt Treasury. But, as many universal-health care liberals complain, selling pain is poor salesmanship.

(5) Promise nothing but pleasure – for now. Make health insurance universal and permanently protected. Tear up the existing bills and write a clean one – Obamacare 2.0 – promulgating draconian health-insurance regulation that prohibits (a) denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, (b) dropping coverage if the client gets sick and (c) capping insurance company reimbursement.

What’s not to like? If you have insurance, you’ll never lose it. Nor will your children ever be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The regulated insurance companies will get two things in return. Government will impose an individual mandate that will force the purchase of health insurance on the millions of healthy young people who today forgo it. And government will subsidize all the others who are too poor to buy health insurance. The result? Two enormous new revenue streams created by government for the insurance companies.

And here’s what makes it so politically seductive: The end result is the liberal dream of universal and guaranteed coverage – but without overt nationalization. It is all done through private insurance companies. Ostensibly private, they will, in reality, have been turned into government utilities. No longer able to control whom they can enroll, whom they can drop and how much they can limit their own liability, they will live off government largesse – subsidized premiums from the poor; forced premiums from the young and healthy.

It’s the perfect finesse – government health care by proxy. And because it’s proxy, and because it will guarantee access to (supposedly) private health insurance – something that enjoys considerable Republican support – it will pass with wide bipartisan backing and give Obama a resounding political victory.

Isn’t there a catch? Of course, there is. This scheme is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The pleasure comes now, the pain later.

Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.

However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. That’s when the liberals will give the FCCCER regulatory power and give you end-of-life counseling.

But by then, resistance will be feeble. Why? Because at that point the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.

I’m still trying to get my head around the idea that a public school can ban a student from wearing a T-shirt with the First Amendment printed on the back.

Where is that written in the Constitution?

“Congress shall make no law …” isn’t really an anything-goes license for expression. But surely even limits on students’ speech must themselves abide by reasonable limits.

Most of the news stories I’ve seen about the lawsuit Pete Palmer and his parents filed against the Waxahachie, Texas, school district have focused on his being told his “John Edwards for President” shirt violated the high school’s dress code.

Not so highlighted is the fact that officials also rejected a shirt flaunting the text of the First Amendment.

And a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week said it would not issue a preliminary injunction against enforcing the ban.

If you analyze the case by just applying sterile legal tests, I suppose, maybe you can reach that conclusion.

As court papers describe the dispute, Palmer was a sophomore who showed up at school in September 2007 wearing a black T-shirt that read “San Diego.”

An assistant principal said he was violating the dress code’s no-messages provision, so his father brought him a T-shirt with a logo resembling a John Edwards ’08 bumper sticker.

Couldn’t wear that one either. Palmer and his lawyer-father couldn’t convince various district officials that the code should exempt clearly political messages that weren’t disruptive, lewd or advocating illegal behavior.

So the family sued.

Under a revised dress code, students could no longer tout their favorite college or pro team but could flash political buttons, bumper stickers or wristbands. That was supposed to compensate for not being able to wear even an Edwards for President polo shirt or a T-shirt with “Freedom of Speech” on the front and the First Amendment on the back, both of which officials rejected, according to the 5th Circuit.

In a series of rulings, the most famous of which is Tinker v. Des Moines School District in 1969, the Supreme Court has said that students don’t shed their constitutional free-speech rights at the schoolhouse gate.

But none of those cases really matter for Waxahachie, it turns out, because the dress code bars all messages – innocuous, popular or controversial – that aren’t related to school teams, groups or activities.

That makes it viewpoint-neutral, the 5th Circuit said, and therefore a pretty straightforward call: Promotes an important government interest; doesn’t aim to suppress speech; and is not broader than necessary.

This ruling also makes me wonder where the court will go with another dress code brouhaha in which students and their parents decided to pick a fight.

A different three-judge panel heard arguments in February over whether Burleson (Texas) High School could require a pair of students to leave their Confederate flag purses home.

This is not a content-neutral rule; it admittedly targeted displays that officials said had caused too much racial hostility and turmoil to be allowed at school.

The girls, who’ve since graduated, have argued that the amount of conflict has been exaggerated, the school doesn’t uniformly police inappropriate displays and, in any event, displaying the flag promotes healthy discussion.

It would be just perverse if a federal appeals court were to let Waxahachie ban the First Amendment on a shirt but require Burleson to allow Confederate flag-emblazoned purses.

But it wouldn’t be the first time the First Amendment’s been stood on its head.

KABUL, Afghanistan – The main challenger to Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday he has received “alarming” reports of “widespread rigging” in Thursday’s presidential election by pro-government groups and officials, but he called on supporters to be patient and said he hopes the problem will be resolved through the official election review.

“The initial reports are a big cause of concern, but hopefully we can prevent fraud through legal means,” Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, said at a news conference. He said his campaign has filed more than 100 complaints of ballot-box stuffing, inflated vote counts and intimidation at the polls by Karzai partisans, often in places where threats from insurgents resulted in low voter turnout.

The allegations of fraud, combined with the slow pace of vote tabulation and the cumbersome process for investigating complaints, are raising political tensions. There is concern that voter anger will unleash violence along the ethnic and regional lines that divide this fragmented society.

Although Karzai was a favorite of the Bush administration, his relations with the Obama administration have been decidedly cooler. The United States did not back any of the dozens of candidates who campaigned for the presidency; Karzai is widely expected to win, though he may have to face a second round in October if he does not obtain at least 50 percent of the vote.

Karzai’s aides responded sharply Sunday night to Abdullah’s charges of fraud, calling them political propaganda and accusing him of trying to bypass the election-review process by taking his complaints to the media. They did not answer any of his specific charges but said they had received similar reports of election violations by Abdullah’s camp.

“We have documented many cases of irregularities by Dr. Abdullah’s team, but we respect the process and we have taken them to the election complaint commission,” said Wahid Omar, chief spokesman for Karzai’s campaign. “To make these allegations in the media for political gain is disrespectful of the process and of the people’s vote. It is an attempt to hijack the process that is not helpful to democracy.”

Abdullah’s charges echoed concerns raised by election monitoring groups here. They have said they received numerous reports of irregularities and bias by polling officials, as well as of pressure on voters by powerful local figures.

WASHINGTON – For all the attention generated by Barack Obama’s candidacy, the share of eligible voters who actually cast ballots in November declined for the first time in a dozen years. The reason: Older whites with little interest in backing either Barack Obama or John McCain stayed home.

Census figures released Monday show about 63.6 percent of all U.S. citizens ages 18 and older, or 131.1 million people, voted last November.

Although that represented an increase of 5 million voters – nearly all of them minorities – the turnout relative to the population of eligible voters was a decrease from 63.8 percent in 2004.

Ohio and Pennsylvania were among those showing declines in white voters, helping Obama carry those battleground states.

“While the significance of minority votes for Obama is clearly key, it cannot be overlooked that reduced white support for a Republican candidate allowed minorities to tip the balance in many slow-growing ‘purple’ states,” said William H. Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institution, referring to battleground states that don’t notably tilt Democrat or Republican.

“The question I would ask is if a continuing stagnating economy could change that,” he said.

According to census data, 66 percent of whites voted last November, down 1 percentage point from 2004. Blacks increased their turnout by 5 percentage points to 65 percent, nearly matching whites. Hispanics improved turnout by 3 percentage points, and Asians by 3.5 percentage points, each reaching a turnout of nearly 50 percent. In all, minorities made up nearly 1 in 4 voters in 2008, the most diverse electorate ever.

By age, voters 18-to-24 were the only group to show a statistically significant increase in turnout, with 49 percent casting ballots, compared with 47 percent in 2004.

Blacks had the highest turnout rate among this age group – 55 percent, or an 8 percentage point jump from 2004. In contrast, turnout for whites 18-24 was basically flat at 49 percent. Asians and Hispanics in that age group increased to 41 percent and 39 percent, respectively.

Among whites 45 and older, turnout fell 1.5 percentage point to just under 72 percent.

Asked to identify their reasons for not voting, 46 percent of all whites said they didn’t like the candidates, weren’t interested or had better things to do, up from 41 percent in 2004. Hispanics had similar numbers for both years.

Not surprisingly, blacks showed a sharp increase in interest.

Among the blacks who failed to vote last fall, most cited problems such as illness, being out of town or transportation issues. Just 16 percent of nonvoting blacks cited disinterest, down from 37 percent in 2004.

Among other findings:

•The decline in percentage turnout was the first in a presidential election since 1996. At that time, voter participation fell to 58.4 percent – the lowest in decades – as Democrat Bill Clinton won an easy re-election over Republican Bob Dole amid a strong economy.

•The voting rate in 2008 was highest in the Midwest (66 percent). The other regions were about 63 percent each.

•Minnesota and the District of Columbia had the highest turnout, each with 75 percent. Utah and Hawaii – Obama’s birth state – were among the lowest, each with 52 percent.

The census figures are based on the Current Population Survey, which asked respondents after Election Day about their turnout. The figures for “white” refer to the whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity.

WASHINGTON – The federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time ever and could grow to nearly $2 trillion by this fall, intensifying fears about higher interest rates, inflation and the strength of the dollar.

The soaring deficit is making Chinese and other foreign buyers of U.S. debt nervous, which could make them reluctant lenders down the road. It could also force the Treasury Department to pay higher interest rates to make U.S. debt attractive longer-term.

The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit in June totaled $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to $1.09 trillion. The administration forecasts that the deficit for the entire year will hit $1.84 trillion in October.

Congress already approved a $700 billion financial bailout for banks, automakers and other sectors, and a $787 billion economic stimulus package to try to jump-start a recovery. Outlays through the first nine months of this budget year total $2.67 trillion, up 20.5 percent from a year ago.

President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have said the U.S. is committed to bringing down the deficits once the economy and financial sector recover. The Obama administration has set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.

In the meantime, the U.S. debt now stands at $11.5 trillion. Interest payments on the debt cost $452 billion last year – the largest federal spending category after Medicare-Medicaid, Social Security and defense.

The overall debt is now slightly more than 80 percent of the annual output of the entire U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product. During World War II, it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP.

Many private economists say the administration had no choice but to take aggressive action.

“We have a deep recession hammering tax revenues and forcing the government to provide a lot of help to the economy,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “But without this help, the downturn would be even more severe.”

Republicans in Congress are seizing on the deficit to attack Democrats.

“Washington Democrats keep borrowing and spending money we don’t have,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

The deficit of $1.09 trillion so far this year compares to an imbalance of $285.85 billion through the same period a year ago. The deficit for the 2008 budget year, which ended Sept. 30, was $454.8 billion, the current record in dollar terms.

Revenues so far this year total $1.59 trillion, down 17.9 percent from a year ago, reflecting higher unemployment, which cuts into payroll taxes and corporate tax receipts.

Our story so far:

Last year, Barack Obama was elected president, the first American of African heritage ever to reach that office. If this was regarded as a new beginning by most Americans, it was regarded apocalyptically by others who promptly proceeded to lose both their minds and any pretense of enlightenment.

These are the people who immediately declared it their fervent hope that the new presidency fail, the ones who cheered when the governor of Texas raised the specter of secession, the ones who went online to rechristen the executive mansion the “Black” House, and to picture it with a watermelon patch out front.

On tax day they were the ones who, having apparently just discovered the grim tidings April 15 brings us all each year, launched angry, unruly protests. In the debate over health care reform, they are the ones who have disrupted town hall meetings, shouting about the president’s supposed plan for “death panels” to euthanize the elderly.

Now, they are the ones bringing firearms to places the president is speaking.

The Washington Post tells us at least a dozen individuals have arrived openly – and, yes, legally – strapped at events in Arizona and New Hampshire, including at least one who carried a semiautomatic assault rifle. In case the implied threat is not clear, one of them also brought a sign referencing Thomas Jefferson’s quote about the need to water the tree of liberty with “the blood of … tyrants.”

It remains unclear, once you get beyond the realm of Internet myth, alarmist rhetoric and blatant lie, what the substance of the president’s supposed tyranny might be. “Socialized health care?” Given that our libraries, schools, police and fire departments are all “socialized,” that’s hard to swallow.

When and if the implied violence comes, perhaps its author will explain. Meanwhile, expect those who stoked his rage – i.e., the makers of Internet myths, alarmist rhetoric and blatant lies – to disdain any and all moral responsibility for the outcome.

These are strange times. They call to mind what historian Henry Adams said in the mid-1800s: “There are grave doubts at the hugeness of the land and whether one government can comprehend the whole.”

Adams spoke in geographical terms of a nation rapidly expanding toward the Pacific. Our challenge is less geographical than spiritual, less a question of the distance between Honolulu and New York than between you and the person right next to you. Such as when you look at a guy who thought it a good idea to bring a “gun” to a presidential speech and find yourself stunned by incomprehension. On paper, he is your fellow American, but you absolutely do not know him, recognize nothing of yourself in him. You keep asking yourself: Who is this guy?

We frame the differences in terms of “conservative” and “liberal,” but these are tired old markers that with overuse and misuse have largely lost whatever meaning they used to have and with it, any ability to explain us to us. This isn’t liberal vs. conservative, it is yesterday vs. tomorrow, the stress of profound cultural and demographic changes that will leave none of us as we were.

And change, almost by definition, always comes too fast, always brings a sense of stark dislocation. As in the woman who cried to a reporter, “I want ‘my country’ back!” Probably the country she meant still had Beaver Cleaver on TV and Doris Day on “Your Hit Parade.”

Round and round we go and where we stop, nobody knows. And it is an open question, as it was for Henry Adams, what kind of country we’ll have when it’s done. Can one government comprehend the whole? It may be harder to answer now than it was then.

The distances that divide us cannot be measured in miles.

Midway through the month’s town hall meetings on health care, it seems the shark has jumped the shark – and even Hitler must be sick of himself.

The terrible tyrant can’t get a rest these days. For eight years, he was George W. Bush. Now he’s Barack H. Obama. We just can’t quit the monster with the fur lip.

His latest appearance is on a poster of Obama with the iconic mustache, which looks more like a missed crumb than a manly punctuation mark. The poster has become a favored accessory among some of America’s squeakier wheels.

There is some debate about whether the Hitler resurrectionists are haters or faux haters – i.e., Democratic Party plants aimed at making Republicans seem crazed.

Whatever the truth – and Truth morphs by the moment – it seems increasingly clear that the erstwhile shining city upon a hill has become ’Toon Town, a circus of media acrobats, political clowns and street-corner barkers.

Step right up and get your cotton candy, it’s only a dollar and the show is free!

One recent sideshow, a town hall in Las Vegas available for viewing on YouTube, features an Israeli-American man railing to cameras when a woman nearby yells, “Heil Hitler.”

What?! The man turns to berate her: “You’re telling me, ‘Heil Hitler’? Shame of you!”

The camera rolls; the man continues shouting about the high cost of a recent hospital visit; the woman dabs her eyes to clear away fake crocodile tears. It’s a wrap.

Next up, zoom to Dartmouth, Mass., where Rep. Barney Frank addresses a town hall at the Dartmouth Council on Aging. A woman holding an Obama-as-Hitler poster asks the congressman why he supports a Nazi policy.

To the apparent delight of many, Frank says he will revert to his ethnic heritage and respond to the question with a question:

“On what planet do you spend most of your time?”

Next he says that comparing the president’s attempts to expand health care to Hitler is a tribute to the First Amendment and that trying to have a conversation with this woman would be like trying to argue with his dining room table. He chooses not to.

Hear, hear. Invocations of Hitler usually mean two things: one, a poverty of imagination, and two, a paucity of good arguments. It is nearly axiomatic that any protest against government action will feature Hitler in some form. Left and right are equally guilty.

Trivializing such evil is an insult to the memory of millions who suffered and died by his order, as well as to the intelligence of all sentient beings.

It may no longer be possible in this country to have a serious debate about anything. Inevitably, substance devolves into silliness. Even the most dignified of statesmen become caricatures when juxtaposed with the ridiculous.

While it’s easy to blame “the media,” there’s no longer any single entity to indict. In a world where everyone has video – and distribution is both free and easy – every little thing is a “story.” And so the exercised Israeli-American and his mocking nemesis become stars on the world stage. The Obama-Hitler woman may be only infamous, but she is a celebrity of sorts.

One may reasonably oppose Frank’s and the Democrats’ views on health care on the merits – and plenty of informed people do. But when Frank is tossed into the ring with a Hitler-wielding instigator, he looks the sage from Vesuvius and his opponents escapees from the asylum.

Given the choice of company, which would you prefer?

Never mind whether any of the rabble-rousers would be known were it not for the ever-present cameras and microphones. Would they have performed as they did – yelling and aping – had there been no one on hand to record their antics?

Alas, we can’t even critique the phenomenon known as Heisenberg’s Principle of Observation without circling back to Herr Hitler. Physicist Werner Heisenberg, leader of Hitler’s atomic bomb project, came up with an “uncertainty principle” that has been used – some say misused – to suggest that things observed are altered by the fact of observation.

Translation: When you turn on the camera, the presence of the camera alters whatever transpires.

There isn’t much we can do about the convergence of technology and the persistent plague of narcissism, but there is something we can do about Hitler. The moment he shows up in any form, turn off the cameras. Consider it an act of nonviolent protest – and self-respect.

Bernanke

JACKSON, Wyo. – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday offered his most optimistic outlook since the financial crisis struck, saying the economy is on the verge of growing again.

Speaking at an annual Fed conference, Bernanke acknowledged no missteps by the central bank in managing the worst crisis since the Great Depression. But he conceded that consumers and businesses are still having trouble getting loans, even though the financial system is gradually stabilizing.

Economic activity in both the U.S. and around the world seems to be leveling out, and the economy is likely to start growing again soon, Bernanke said.

Bernanke’s hopeful remarks on the economy contributed to a rally on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average surged about 155 points, or 1.7 percent, and broader stock averages also gained sharply.

Despite his upbeat tone, Bernanke cautioned that the recovery is likely to be “relatively slow at first.”

Unemployment, now at 9.4 percent, is widely expected to hit double digits later this year and to remain high for many months.

The financial markets have stabilized, and some businesses and consumers have found it easier to get loans. Still, the banking system has yet to return to normal, Bernanke said.

Financial institutions face further losses on soured investments. And many businesses and households still can’t get the credit they need to fuel the economy, he said.

“Although we have avoided the worst, difficult challenges still lie ahead,” Bernanke told the gathering of fellow bankers, academics and economists. “We must work together to build on the gains already made to secure a sustained economic recovery.”

Reviewing the past year’s crisis, Bernanke outlined the many emergency measures the Fed and other regulators took to help ward off a global financial meltdown. He declined to acknowledge critics’ arguments that regulators failed to detect signs of the crisis before it occurred – or that Wall Street bailouts sent a message that big companies that make reckless bets would be rescued with taxpayer money.

A $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout program to prop up financial institutions incensed many Americans. So did the repeated bailouts of AIG, which paid hefty bonuses to employees who worked in the division that brought down the firm.

Some analysts said Bernanke appeared to be angling to keep his job for another term.

“The lack of any mea culpa suggests the Fed chairman wants to be reappointed,” said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research. “When you go on an interview, you never speak of your shortcomings.”

President Barack Obama will have to decide in coming months whether to reappoint or replace Bernanke, whose term expires early next year.

The bulk of Bernanke’s speech chronicled the extraordinary events of the past year.

Financial markets took a dizzying plunge starting in September and into October, nearly shutting down the flow of credit. The crisis felled storied Wall Street firms. The government took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as insurance titan American International Group Inc.

Lehman Brothers failed. It filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, the largest in corporate history, roiling markets worldwide.

The Fed swooped in with unprecedented emergency lending programs to fight the crisis. It eventually slashed a key bank lending rate to a record low near zero. And Congress enacted programs to stimulate the economy, including a $787 billion package of tax cuts and increased government spending.

“Without these speedy and forceful actions, last October’s panic would likely have continued to intensify, more major firms would have failed and the entire global financial system would have been at serious risk,” Bernanke said.

Unlike in the 1930s, Washington policymakers this time acted aggressively and quickly to contain the crisis, said Bernanke, a scholar of the Great Depression.

“As severe as the economic impact has been, however, the outcome could have been decidedly worse,” he said.

Global cooperation in battling the crisis was crucial, with central banks slashing interest rates and the U.S. and other governments delivering fiscal stimulus, he said.

Sitting on death row in Georgia, Troy Davis has won a key victory against his own execution. On Aug. 17, the U.S. Supreme Court instructed a federal court in Georgia to consider, for the first time in a formal court proceeding, significant evidence of Davis’ innocence that surfaced after his conviction. This is the first such order from the U.S. Supreme Court in almost 50 years. Remarkably, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.

The order read, in part, “The District Court should receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes petitioner’s innocence.” Behind the order lay a stunning array of recantations from those who originally testified as eyewitnesses to the murder of off-duty Savannah police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail on Aug. 19, 1989. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses who originally identified Davis as the murderer of MacPhail have since recanted, some alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining their testimony. Of the remaining two witnesses, one, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, is accused by others as the shooter and likely identified Davis as the perpetrator to save himself from arrest.

On the night of the murder, MacPhail was working as a security guard at a Burger King. A homeless man was being beaten in the parking lot. The altercation drew Davis and others to the scene, along with MacPhail. MacPhail intervened, and was shot and killed with a .38-caliber gun. Later, Coles arrived at the police station, accompanied by a lawyer, and identified Davis as the shooter. The police engaged in a high-profile manhunt, with Davis’ picture splayed across the newspapers and television stations. Davis turned himself in. With no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Davis was convicted and sentenced to death.

Jeffrey Sapp’s affidavit is typical of those in the case who recanted their eyewitness testimony:

“The police … put a lot of pressure on me to say ‘Troy said this’ or ‘Troy said that.’ They wanted me to tell them that Troy confessed to me about killing that officer … they made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear.”

Despite the seven recantations, Georgia’s parole commission has refused to commute Davis’ sentence. Courts have refused to hear the evidence, mostly on procedural grounds. Conservatives like former Georgia congressman and prosecutor Bob Barr and former FBI Director William Sessions have called for justice in his case, along with Pope Benedict XVI, President Jimmy Carter, the NAACP and Amnesty International.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, “The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing.” Yet conservative Justice Antonin Scalia dissented (along with Justice Clarence Thomas), writing that Davis’ case “is a sure loser,” and “this Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

After surviving three execution dates, once within two hours of lethal injection, Troy Davis will finally have his day in court. With the courageous support of his sister, Martina Correia (who has been fighting for his life as well as her own – she has stage 4 breast cancer) and his nephew, Antone De’Jaun Correia, who at 15 is a budding human-rights activist, Davis may yet defy death.

That could lead to a long-overdue precedent in U.S. law: It is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.

“Fear is the most powerful enemy of reason. Both fear and reason are essential to human survival, but the relationship between them is unbalanced. Reason may sometimes dissipate fear, but fear frequently shuts down reason.” – From “The Assault on Reason” by Al Gore

“I’m afraid of Obama!” – Woman at a town hall meeting on health care reform

I have no opinion on H.R. 3200. Mainly because I haven’t read it.

Pardon my presumption, but chances are beyond excellent that you haven’t, either. The PDF file of the bill, otherwise known as the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, clocks in at 1,017 pages of often-dense legalese and jargon. I’d like to read it, but I’d also like to have a life, and the two are incompatible.

So excuse me, beg pardon, but it would be really valuable to hear an explanation of the bill by those who presumably have read it, followed by vigorous questioning. Instead, the circus has come to town.

I refer, of course, to the chaos that has erupted at town hall meetings as Democratic lawmakers try to sell the bill. The New York Times reports shouting matches, fistfights, threats, injuries and arrests. Georgia Congressman David Scott says he’s had death threats and a visit from vandals who painted a swastika outside his office.

If you wonder what the Nazis have to do with this, join the club. It’s an incoherent protest and where there is incoherence, naturally, there is Sarah Palin. The former governor of Alaska weighed in on Facebook with a claim that Democrats were proposing a “downright evil” system in which the fate of the elderly and the disabled would be determined by “death panels.”

She said she was referring to Sec. 1233 of the bill, so I read it. It would require your doctor to regularly consult with you on the need for a living will and advanced care directives, i.e., decide ahead of time if you’d want to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state. The requirement may or may not be a good idea, but it’s hardly “downright evil” and it bears no resemblance to the image Palin conjures: Granny forced to justify her continued existence before a panel of men in black hoods.

Conservatives would have you believe this pandemonium is spontaneous. Truth is, it’s about as spontaneous as a shuttle launch. The Times account tells us a banner appeared on the Web site of Fox News host Sean Hannity inviting people to “Become a part of the mob!” A group calling itself Tea Party Patriots advises its members to pack the hall and “yell out.” This is manufactured outrage.

And that’s fine. If people choose to become part of a synchronized protest, they have every right to. Nor is there anything wrong with dissent. As many of us pointed out when George W. Bush’s enablers sought to silence his critics, dissent is patriotic.

But shouting down those who disagree with you is not. Neither is threatening, shoving, hitting, painting swastikas or otherwise rendering reasoned debate impossible. That’s not love of country, it’s not dissent, it’s not even civilized. It’s boorish, oafish and crude, the rantings of people panicked beyond reason.

In other words, conservatives. OK, not all of them. But too many of them? Definitely.

By now, it has become reflex, this instinct of theirs to manipulate the debate and muddy the waters by stoking people’s primal fears, whether of gays, Muslims, Hispanics or now health care reform. “I’m afraid of Obama!” screams a woman. And doesn’t that just say it all? Doesn’t that speak volumes about the intellectual bankruptcy and decayed moral authority of the political right? With apologies to Franklin Roosevelt, the only thing they have to sell is fear itself.

And no, that’s not patriotism. It is the cynical behavior of people who have little faith in their ability to win the debate. So they pick a fight and try to win that instead.

Oh, for those halcyon days when our biggest worry was whether the federal “faith-based” office might encourage a homeless person to find Jesus.

Remember that?

Hardly anyone talks much about the faith-based initiative begun by President George W. Bush and expanded by President Barack Obama. Nor was there hardly a murmur about Obama’s appointee to head the program, Joshua DuBois, a 27-year-old Pentecostal preacher.

A comparison of how the media have treated the two presidents and their faith-based programs during the first six months of their administrations (2001 and 2009) is the subject of a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The findings suggest a very different standard applied to each president.

When Bush introduced the concept of a faith-based office, the original vision was to help nonprofit charities get government support to help feed the hungry and house the homeless. From the reaction, you’d have thought Bush was trying to install a caliphate. Indeed, most newspaper stories focused on the blurring of church and state.

By contrast, when Obama upgraded and renamed the program – the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships – most stories focused on procedural questions and a new, 25-member faith-based advisory council. Few, if any, headlines questioned whether Obama might be using his faith-based office to advance liberal policies, whereas Bush was under persistent fire for allegedly pushing (horrors!) a pro-life agenda.

The only issue that attracted much attention under Obama’s watch – also a concern under Bush – was whether faith-based organizations receiving federal funds could make hiring decisions based on a person’s religious beliefs. Obama has called for a review of the policy.

The Pew study used keyword searches to identify stories for analysis – a total of 331 newspaper articles from January to June 2001 (281) and from January to June 2009 (50).

During the Bush years, stories were 50 percent more likely to be on the front page than in 2009, and separation of church and state was the top concern in 2001.

The study takes a stab at explaining these discrepancies. One obvious explanation is that the program was new under Bush. By the time Obama rolled into town, it was a known – and not very threatening – quantity. And Obama inherited a full menu of demanding issues, on top of which he added an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Who has time to nitpick nonprofits helping the poor?

Not so fast, says Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (and director of the Evangelicals in Civic Life program). Cromartie insists that the disparate levels of scrutiny can’t be attributed only to timing and busy schedules.

“Sure, there’s always a lot going on in Washington with any new administration. But can you imagine the outcry if Bush had hired a 27-year-old Pentecostal preacher to run the faith-based office and surrounded him with a 25-member advisory board made up of people largely sympathetic to his policy agenda?”

In fact, Bush appointed University of Pennsylvania political science professor John DiIulio, a Democrat, to run his program. Cromartie maintains that the greater attention to Bush was because the media were suspicious that his faith-based initiative was an attempt to install a theocracy.

Bush can be partly blamed for this perception, having once said that God wanted him to be president. He also told Bob Woodward that in making decisions about Iraq, he didn’t consult his temporal father – the former president, George H.W. Bush – but yielded to a higher Father.

Obama, who, in fact, invokes Jesus in speeches more often than Bush did, according to an analysis by Politico, not only embraced his predecessor’s initiative, but has given it the loaves-and-fishes treatment by expanding the mission. As described by DuBois in a video posted on the White House blog, the office’s mission extends even to “figuring out the role of faith-based organizations in combating global climate change.”

Why does Obama get a pass?

In part, because he’s not Bush. But also, perhaps, because the media are more approving of the issues and policies Obama wants to advance.

One may argue, as Bush critics have, that the previous administration similarly tried to advance policy through its faith-based office. What one may not argue is that Obama has been treated to the same scrutiny as his predecessor.

Before the opponents of health care reform turned congressional town meetings into shouting matches, they had picked another target. The naysayers announced to the world that the economic stimulus bill signed by President Barack Obama in February was a dismal failure, too.

That judgment seemed premature at the time, and it looks even shakier now that the Federal Reserve Board has concluded the economy, which was in free-fall last winter, has stabilized and “is leveling out.”

To probe the question further, I spent the other morning at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, which scheduled a panel discussion on the topic. Three Brookings scholars and a suburban Washington mayor agreed on one thing: No one can realistically pronounce the massive $787 billion stimulus bill either a flop or a triumph at this point.

As one of the panelists said, the bill, which was quickly assembled and hastily passed by a Congress frightened that the economy might collapse at any moment, “was a hodgepodge package, and we are getting hodgepodge results.”

Economist Barry Bosworth launched the discussion on a skeptical note, saying that the recession may be ending, but “the government stimulus did not have a lot to do with the recovery.” He complained that in the autumn of 2008, when the election was uppermost on politicians’ minds, Congress was tardy in responding to the warning signs of what became the worst slump since the Great Depression. As a result, funds have been delayed in reaching hard-hit communities.

But Bosworth later conceded that when consumers’ disposable income was dropping early this year at an annual rate of half a trillion dollars, the government stepped in with tax cuts, direct payments and extended unemployment benefits that “completely offset” the hemorrhaging of the private economy. “That’s a pretty amazing accomplishment,” he said. Other panelists pointed to more familiar accomplishments – the stimulus money to states and local governments that will postpone or avoid layoffs of teachers and police officers. Most of those benefits have not registered yet with the public because, as school finance specialist Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst pointed out, of the $115 billion in stimulus funds allocated to the Department of Education, checks have been written for only $13 billion. A mere $25 million has been contracted for specific projects.

Obviously, this strengthens the critics’ argument that much of the stimulus money – all of it borrowed from our overseas creditors – won’t be spent until the economy is already on the mend.

But the most important thing I learned from the session was not what was right and wrong about the stimulus bill. After all, it is not likely to be rescinded or significantly altered by the Congress that passed it.

Rather, what emerged in much clearer focus is what we are likely to face when 2010, the year when stimulus spending will peak, is over, and we have to figure out what to do next. At that point, Obama will be under great pressure to slow down the frantic pace of federal spending and to address the unprecedented deficits of this year and next.

But, as Amy Liu, the panel’s expert on state and local finances, pointed out, the vast differences in local economies will clearly leave some cities and metropolitan areas in need of help. As of March, unemployment rates ranged from a low of 5.1 percent in Provo, Utah, to a high of 17.5 percent in Modesto, Calif. Long after Provo can dispense with federal aid, Modesto and other cities such as Toledo and Detroit are likely to require assistance. Congress will not be eager to pass another big national stimulus bill, but some way will have to be found to funnel funds to the places where they are most needed.

Meanwhile, there’s no quick fix for many communities. Chris Zimmerman, a county board member in the Washington suburb of Arlington, Va., pointed out that property taxes – the mainstay of local budgets – typically take two years to recover after the bottom of a recession. This means that at best, mayors and council members will be looking for help even when 2011 rolls around.

Bad news for “birthers,” those people who think Barack Obama isn’t legally president because he wasn’t born in the United States: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers isn’t on your side.

Birthers may have briefly harbored hope – and people who think the whole idea is crazy may have arched an eyebrow – about two weeks ago when the Eastern Washington Republican gave a wishy-washy answer to a blogger from the Huffington Post while hurrying up the Capitol steps.

Asked if she thought Obama was a natural-born citizen, constitutionally permitted to be president, she replied: “We’re all going to find out.”

Asked what she believed personally, she said: “Oh, I’d like to see the documents.”

The video was up on YouTube, and many other Web sites, including the one for this column. It features other House Republicans giving ambiguous answers to questions of Obama’s citizenship qualifications, too, but McMorris Rodgers is second in the clip.

The birther issue came to the Inland Northwest last spring, when Chief Justice John Roberts was asked about a court case regarding Obama’s birth certificate during a visit to the University of Idaho. The questioner was Orly Taitz, a dentist and lawyer from California, who asked Roberts about papers she had filed months earlier.

Some people in the movement regard Taitz as a cross between Paul Revere and Joan of Arc. Some outside the movement regard her as bonkers. Spin Control will only say that she can talk very fast, long and passionately about the whole thing, so don’t call her if you’re pressed for time.

The controversy thrived for months on the Internet, but most news outlets ignored it until recently. In July, however, it hit big on the 24-hour cable news shows, which apparently had time to fill in the summer doldrums.

McMorris Rodgers is back in the district during the summer recess and held her first public events Wednesday in Colville – where, it should be noted, no one in the audiences asked her about Obama’s citizenship. But between town hall appearances, we did.

Spin Control: Do you have any doubts that Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States and constitutionally entitled to be president?

McMorris Rodgers: I have looked into it further. There’s a reality that it’s been in the courts, the courts have ruled that he is indeed a legal citizen, born in the country, and I think it’s a nonissue.

SC: Should Congress take up the issue?

McM R: No. Absolutely not. The people elected him president, the courts have looked at the issue. It’s settled. We need to move on.

When she told the Huffington Post “we’re going to find out,” she added, she meant she was trying to get some information herself, not that Congress needed to look into it. She hasn’t seen the pictures of Obama’s certification of live birth on the Internet – which birthers say doesn’t prove anything, anyway – but she does know his birth was reported in the Honolulu newspapers back in 1961 and thinks it’s legitimate.

And she’s received “quite a bit” of blowback from constituents over her appearance on the Huffington Post video.

She isn’t signing on to what some call a “birther bill,” which requires all presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate to prove they are natural-born citizens.

H.R. 1503, drafted by Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., isn’t going anywhere, anyway, as it has 10 Republican co-sponsors in a Democrat-controlled House. Because, after all, the fix is in and Democrats don’t want their president knocked out of office by anything that could, you know, expose the truth.

Turner

CHICAGO – Internet radio host Hal Turner disliked how three federal judges rejected the National Rifle Association’s attempt to overturn a pair of handgun bans.

“Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed,” Turner wrote on his blog June 2, according to the FBI. “Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions.”

The next day, Turner posted photographs of the appellate judges and a map showing the Chicago courthouse where they work, noting the placement of “anti-truck bomb barriers.” When an FBI agent appeared at the door of his New Jersey home, Turner said he meant no harm.

He is now behind bars awaiting trial for threatening the judges, deemed by a U.S. magistrate as too dangerous to be free.

Turner’s case will likely test the limits of political speech at a time when incendiary talk is proliferating on broadcast outlets and the Internet, from the microphones of well-known commentators to the keyboards of anonymous webizens. President Barack Obama has been depicted as a Nazi and slain Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller as “Tiller the killer.” On guns and abortion, war and torture, taxes and now health care, the commentary feeds off pools of anger that ebb and flow with the zeitgeist.

Mark Potok, an editor at the Southern Poverty Law Center who tracks extremists and hate speech, thinks that “political speech has gotten rougher in the last six months.”

While federal authorities moved swiftly to stop Turner, scholars note that the line between free speech and criminality is a fine one.

Turner’s attorney says prosecutors overreacted.

“He gave an opinion. He did not say go out and kill,” defense attorney Michael Orozco said last week after unsuccessfully seeking bail. “This is political hyperbole, nothing more. He’s a shock jock.”

That is not how U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and his prosecutors see the case. They charged Turner, a blogger admired by white supremacists, with threatening the lives of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit: Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner and William Bauer.

Writing on his blog, which has since been taken down, Turner disputed a June 2 ruling by the three judges, who said a federal district judge had properly dismissed the NRA’s lawsuit to overturn handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill. It was a Supreme Court matter, said the judges.

Turner called the judges – including Posner and Easterbrook, two of the nation’s most prominent conservative jurists – “unpatriotic, deceitful scum.” He said the only thing standing in the way of the judges and “the government” achieving ultimate power “is the fact that We The People have guns. Now, that is very much in jeopardy.”

Quoting Thomas Jefferson, Turner said, “The tree of liberty must be replenished from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.” He added his own words: “It is time to replenish the tree!”

Turner, 47, who had three semiautomatic handguns, a shotgun and 350 rounds of ammunition in his North Bergen, N.J., home when the FBI arrested him, worked at times as an FBI informant. Although Fitzgerald’s office says he provided occasional information on right-wing extremists, Orozco said he was recruited as an “agent provocateur” to get leftists to act in public against him and reveal themselves to the FBI.

First Amendment scholar Martin Redish said much of what Turner wrote is protected by the Constitution, including his declarations that the judges should be eliminated. But he said Turner probably crossed a line when he printed information about the judges, their office locations and the courthouse.

“I would give very strong odds on a thousand bucks that once he said that stuff, it takes it out of any kind of hyperbole range,” said Redish, a professor at Northwestern University Law School. “I just don’t see him being protected.”