January 2012
2011 Year-in-Review: Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back
Gridlock in Congress, Volatility in the Economy, But at the End of the Year We’re More or Less Where We Started
By Warren Cole Smith, with contributions from Jamie Dean, Joel Hannahs, Emily Belz, Edward Lee Pitts, and Megan Basham
(WNS)—When the U.S. House of Representatives launched the 112th session of Congress Jan. 6, it began with a recitation of the U.S. Constitution. It was – amazingly, to some — the first time the document had ever been read in its entirety on the House floor.
In some ways this reading proved to be a metaphor for the year 2011. Though, of course, it’s a metaphor that could be interpreted in at least two ways: Will 2011 be seen as a year in which the country returned to first principles, or one in which we discovered that such efforts were too little, too late?
This very question may have been on John Boehner’s mind when he addressed the House of Representatives on Jan. 6, to kick off the year. Boehner was the new Speaker of the House, taking the gavel from outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and he said – sometimes through tears — what many were thinking: “No longer can we fall short. No longer can we kick the can down the road. The people voted to end business as usual, and today we begin to carry out their instructions.”
It’s Still The Economy, Silly
Of course, Boehner wasn’t the only one making speeches. President Obama delivered his State of the Union address to Congress a few weeks later against the backdrop of a new political reality. Republicans made massive election gains the previous November, and the president pointed out the obvious: no legislation would move forward without Republican and Democratic support.
Economic recovery was the centerpiece of the speech, as economic recovery was and remained the top story both in the news and in the minds of most Americans. He proposed government “investment” in education, research, and development that would spur the economy and create jobs, which he called “the first step in winning the future.”
Of course, when you’re out of money, you can’t spend money without borrowing – whether you call that spending an “investment” or not. And while the Obama Administration was “investing” public funds, trillions of dollars in private funds were sitting on the sidelines. Investors were afraid to invest in an economy that could be arbitrarily manipulated by the government without notice.
It was with all this in mind that the new chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., delivered the GOP response to the president, clarifying their differences. “Depending on bureaucracy to foster innovation, competitiveness, and wise consumer choices has never worked—and it won’t work now,” he said. “We hold to a couple of simple convictions: Endless borrowing is not a strategy; spending cuts have to come first.”
Ryan was the official Republican response, but not the only one. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., also delivered her own response, in some sense representing the Tea Party perspective. It was a bold – some would say presumptuous – thing to do, but it was also emblematic of the great divide between the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party and the Establishment Wing – a divide that would play itself out time after time in 2011.
“Make Them Proud”
Also in January, on the 8th, an assassin left six people dead and 14, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wounded, in Tucson, Arizona, and on this occasion, President Obama gave a speech that will likely be remembered long after his State of the Union Address is forgotten.
He began his speech with words of mourning and remembrance from the Psalms for the six people who lost their lives in the incident—Judge John Roll, Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck, Dorwan Stoddard, Gabe Zimmerman, and Christina Taylor Green. He then encouraged prayers for the quick recovery of the wounded.
Obama also used Scripture to help him address the national debate about the cause of the tragedy, saying, “In the words of Job, ‘when I looked for light, then came darkness.’ Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.”
During his 34-minute speech, the president asked Americans not to turn on each other, saying, “At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized—at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do—it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
Some of his remarks seemed intended to chastise those like Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik who, in the aftermath of the shooting, claimed that vitriol on the part of right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh may have motivated alleged shooter Jared Loughner. “If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy. It did not,” asserted Obama, emphasizing those last three words that weren’t in his prepared remarks. “But rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation in a way that would make them proud.”
After days of rancor, prominent conservatives expressed their appreciation for the president’s words. “[He] turned in a magnificent performance,” wrote National Review editor Rich Lowry immediately after the speech. “This was a non-accusatory, genuinely civil, case for civility, in stark contrast to what we’ve read and heard over the last few days. . . . Well done.” Fox News contributor and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer also approved the president’s performance, saying, “The emphasizing of the innocence and idealism of [9-year-old victim Christina Taylor Green] and saying that is the reason we ought to act in a new and civil way was quite remarkable and extremely effective.”
The emotional high point of the evening came when Obama reported on the condition of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords from his visit with her earlier in the day. “Gabby opened her eyes for the first time,” he said to raucous cheers and a standing ovation. “She knows we are here, she knows we love her, and she knows we are rooting for her.”
Indeed, later in the year, on Aug. 1, just as the House was in the midst of an acrimonious debt ceiling debate, Giffords walked back into the House chamber to a standing ovation. By the end of the year she and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, had a book on the best-seller list.
And so, improbably, House lawmakers left Washington for the traditional August recess, on a high note.
Grassley Probe Concluded
Another sign of the dysfunction of government was the conclusion of Sen. Charles Grassley’s three-year probe into the financial affairs of six prosperity gospel televangelists — without handing down any penalties even though only two ministries fully cooperated with the investigation.
Instead, Grassley’s report recommends that the Internal Revenue Service form an advisory committee to make sure religious organizations don’t abuse their tax-exempt status. Additionally, Grassley asked the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) to lead a national commission to conduct an independent review on accountability and policy within religious organizations.
Donor advocates and ministry watchdogs were disappointed by the announcement. Rod Pitzer of MinistryWatch.com said Grassley’s conclusions were “far less than we could have hoped for.” Pitzer also criticized Grassley for naming the ECFA to lead the commission, calling it a “cop out” that will end up protecting large organizations at the expense of grassroots donors.
In a statement, Michael Batts, an ECFA board member who will chair the commission, said that “self-regulation and accountability [is what] the ECFA is all about. Its model has worked very well for more than 30 years.”
But Pitzer pointed out that self-regulation—at least in its current form—has failed. He noted that less than 2,000 of the more than 1 million religious nonprofit organizations in the country are members of the ECFA. None of the so-called “Grassley Six” televangelists—Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, Eddie Long, Joyce Meyers, and Randy and Paula White—were members when the investigation began, but Meyers has joined since. Meyers and Hinn’s organizations were the only ones of the six that fully cooperated with Grassley’s investigation.
“The organizations in question simply refuse to participate in a voluntary process,” Pitzer said. “And it’s those organizations that refuse to be transparent who are the cause of trouble for all of us.”
“Go Babies”
The State of the Union address and the beginning of Congress are not the only two winter traditions in Washington. Since 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, another annual event has been the annual March for Life, which remembers the anniversary of that decision.
This year’s event was especially cold in Washington, D.C., but the mood was warm and the turnout was high. Support for the pro-life cause has continued to grow, and the largest pro-life congressional class since Roe v. Wade just had just taken office in the House, and state legislatures were passing literally scores of pro-life laws. (See sidebar.) No pro-abortion protestors were immediately visible along the length of the crowd, which marched a mile from the mall to the Supreme Court. A boy scraped a message with a stick in the gravel on the mall: “Go babies!”
“I think the movement feels its strength, and it should,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List. “The electoral strength that it just exercised should be turned into legislative strength.” But she added, “I really do believe [the march] should be a celebration.”
The pro-life lawmakers lined up at the rally before the march to speak, calling for Congress to block federal funding for abortion domestically and overseas, and to defund Planned Parenthood. But they also just celebrated. “We have eight new pro-life Republican women! Thank you!” shouted Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, to the crowd.
The pro-life movement would need its new political power in 2011. The maker of the Plan B morning-after pill asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow girls as young as 11 to be able to buy it without a prescription. Girls younger than 17 currently need a prescription. The “morning-after pill” is given to women within 72 hours of sexual intercourse to prevent pregnancy. The pill contains high concentrations of the hormones found in oral contraceptives and may cause an early abortion. The FDA approved the request. It took political pressure by pro-lifers to get the Obama Administration to override the FDA recommendation.
And pro-life Congressmen attempted to de-fund Planned Parenthood. That effort – which resulted in a vote on April 14 — ultimately failed, but it did put every member of Congress on the record as being for or against the move. Life advocates are also calling on lawmakers to include four pro-life amendments in new spending bills. They would, in addition to defunding Planned Parenthood, reinstate the Mexico City Policy, which prevents federal funds from going to international groups that promote or perform abortions. They would also defund the U.N. Population Fund and stop government-funded abortions in Washington, D.C.
At the March for Life, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., directed a word of caution to Congress, and perhaps to his own Republican leadership: “Amidst these struggles some would have us focus on jobs and spending. Those who would ignore the battle of life have forgotten history. . . . A nation that will not stand for life will not stand for long. You know there can be no lasting prosperity without a moral foundation in law.”
The Presidential Race Continues
This year also brought into sharp focus the GOP primary race. Family advocates in Iowa kicked off the election season with a monthly Presidential Lecture Series.
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was first in line and spoke Feb. 7 at three sites across the state. The 25-minute pro-family lectures were followed by a question-and-answer session facilitated by Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of The Family Leader.
But going first did not help Pawlenty’s chances. His campaign never got traction. By the time the Ames Straw Poll rolled around in August, he was already almost out of the race. Michele Bachmann ended up finishing first that that event. Ron Paul’s enthusiastic followers gave him a strong second-place finish at 4,671 ballots. Tim Pawlenty’s third place finish caused him to drop out of the race – some would later say prematurely, given the gyrations the race has taken on.
However, it’s worth noting that Mitt Romney came in seventh and former Speaker Newt Gingrich was eighth. By year-end, they were the two front-runners.
But between the straw poll in August, and Gingrich’s surge in the polls to front-runner status, a stunning series of events unfolded. A write-in campaign for Perry at the straw poll provided enough encouragement for him to get in the race, and he briefly surged to number one, passing Bachman. Miserable showings in televised debates caused his fall to be as fast as his rise. Then Herman Cain rose – and likewise fell, after unproven but troubling accusations of sexual impropriety.
All of them hoped to be the “Not-Mitt-Romney” candidate. Romney’s well-funded, well-organized campaign has been polling around 25 percent for a year – good enough to be one of the top candidates when there are six to 10 candidates in the race. But this means that 75 percent of likely voters prefer someone else. And as each GOP hopeful took his or her turn at self-destruction, Newt Gingrich would get a bit more than his share of their former supporters.
But Gingrich has major problems of his own, including how to explain to evangelical voters his serial adultery and marriage . That said, “evangelicals love a redemption story,” according to Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty. Indeed, by year-end, Gingrich’s support among evangelical voters appears to be growing.
Politicians and pundits tried to use 2011’s off-year elections as a bellwether for the 2012 elections, but the data ended up being inconclusive, driven more by local issues than national trends. One election that got national attention was a ballot initiative in Mississippi that would have legally defined life as beginning at fertilization. It was defeated 55-45 percent, but most on both sides agreed that the initiative – which would have banned abortion in Mississippi – does not mean the country is reversing its move toward a pro-life position. Nor does it mean that the life issue is seriously “in play” for Republican presidential candidates, all of whom profess to be pro-life.
“We are prepared for a long journey,” said the group’s Keith Ashley in a statement Wed., Nov. 9. “Personhood USA understands that changing a culture—and changing a country—will not happen with one election, and so it is not unexpected.”
Congress to Pursue Prosecution of Obscenity
The sordid tales surrounding Gingrich and Cain sometimes border on obscenity. But real obscenity, the kind that is criminal, has gone unnoticed by the Obama Administration. There was not been a single new federal obscenity indictment in the first two years of the Obama presidency. In 2011, family advocates started asking why.
Nearly 60 national and state groups called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to enforce federal laws against illegal pornography. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Reps. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., and Randy Forbes, R-Va., have taken the lead and are asking their colleagues to sign on to a letter to Holder.
Federal laws prohibit distribution of obscene pornography on the Internet, on cable and satellite TV, through the mail and in retail outlets. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment does not protect obscene material.
“Porn harms people; porn harms children — and with lifelong effects,” said Patrick Trueman, the CEO of Morality in Media and a former chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, at the Department of Justice. “What you know intuitively about the harm caused by pornography is now reflected in research. Addiction to obscene adult pornography is an untreated pandemic and contributes to the breakup of marriages, to sexual violence against women, to the demand for prostitution and sex trafficking, to an increase in child pornography, to on-the-job sexual harassment and to a decline in worker productivity because of time spent viewing Internet pornography.”
The unRule of Law
2011 also saw unfold a couple of the most bizarre legal cases to come down the road in some time.
First up: Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline is the only prosecutor in the U.S. who has ever brought charges against Planned Parenthood. As if to illustrate the adage that no good deed goes unpunished, he was brought before the state ethics panel in Topeka for his troubles. The charge? That he mishandled evidence against the nation’s largest abortion seller.
“This…amounts to the tormenting of a man for doing his job,” columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote at NationalReview.com. “And, God help him, for doing it while daring to believe that … the whole culture of death is a corrosive evil.”
To add irony to the insult and injury, as the year unfolded it became clear that it was the State of Kansas, not Kline, who mishandled evidence – by shredding large numbers of key documents that ultimately made the prosecution of Planned Parenthood impossible.
Kline was elected attorney general in 2002. When he began to investigate whether Planned Parenthood might be breaking the law, the abortion industry nationwide poured more than $2 million into the state to oppose his re-election. Not surprisingly, he lost.
Kline was allowed to retain jurisdiction over the Planned Parenthood investigation when he was appointed prosecutor of Johnson County. Less than a year later — in October 2007 — he filed 107 criminal charges against Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, including 23 felonies. Those charges are pending.
Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, said, “The Left’s biggest beef with Kline is that he subpoenaed medical records” — which did not identify patients.
Kline, who now is teaching at Liberty University, is being defended by the Chicago-based Thomas More Society. Executive Director Peter Breen said the hearing is nothing more than a political witch hunt.
Lopez said Kline should be applauded. “He should be considered a trailblazer, and a hero for women and children and law and justice,” she wrote. “Instead, Planned Parenthood and its allies plan to dance on his professional grave in the coming days, making him a disgraced former prosecutor for the history books.”
And that’s what happened. By the end of the year, the state ethics board had recommended that Kline be “indefinitely suspended” from practicing law in the state, and all felony charges against Planned Parenthood were dropped.
The other legal case that took up residence at the corner of morality and politics was on in which the Obama administration decided no longer to defend in court the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as between a man and a woman and bars federal benefits to same-sex couples.
President Obama now deems the act, which Congress passed in 1996 under President Clinton, unconstitutional, according to a letter U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sent to congressional leadership Feb. 23.
Two cases challenging DOMA are pending before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, so the administration “had to act,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. “It was under a court-imposed deadline to make this decision.”
Obama has long opposed DOMA but his administration defended it as established law. During his campaign to become a U.S. senator, he called the law “abhorrent,” and as president he has said it is “discriminatory” and “interferes with states’ rights.” But the president has previously said, with regards to DOMA, “We have a duty to uphold existing law.” On Jan. 18, when a reporter asked whether the administration would quit defending DOMA in court, then-White House spokesman Robert Gibbs responded, “We can’t declare the law unconstitutional.”
But that’s exactly what Holder and Obama did on Feb. 23. In Holder’s letter, he explained that current DOMA cases would require a higher standard of scrutiny for the law, forcing the president and the attorney general to declare a section of it unconstitutional. He cited an essay by President Clinton’s Solicitor General, Seth Waxman, saying that historically the Department of Justice (DOJ) had declined to defend statutes “in cases in which it is manifest that the president has concluded that the statute is unconstitutional.”
Austin Nimocks, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, said, “When Congress enacts laws on behalf of the American people, the American people have the right to expect them to be defended when they’re challenged. How the attorney general’s constitutional duty to protect and defend the laws of the United States becomes optional is a great mystery.”
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring, a wave of demonstrations throughout the Arab world that has resulted in the overthrow of at least three dictators, actually began in Tunisia in December of 2011. Tunisia’s so-called “Twitter Revolution” was fueled by social media and righteous indignation against the country’s repressive regime.
Civil uprisings followed in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. In Yemen, the prime minister was forced to resign. Major protests also occurred in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman. In some of these countries, such as Jordan, the leaders responded by moving toward Western-style reforms. But in Libya, civil war broke out.
By February, the events of the Arab Spring were beginning to melt Muammar Quaddafi of Libya. In a rambling speech on state television on Feb. 24, the dictator blamed the rebellion, fuelled mostly by young people, on the influence of Osama bin Laden and hallucinogenic drugs.
Ten days after mass protests began unfolding across the country, Quaddafi’s grip on reality wasn’t the only thing loosening: Opposition forces reportedly control large swaths of eastern Libya, and are advancing toward the capital city of Tripoli.
But the battle for the country wasn’t over: Quaddafi has vowed to stay and “die as a martyr” before giving up control of the oil-rich nation he’s ruled for decades. The leader has also vowed his willingness to see others die: Quaddafi called protesters “cockroaches,” and said regime opponents would face execution. Witnesses report that pro-government forces have already killed hundreds, including unarmed civilians.
In the end, Quaddafi did die, though hardly as a martyr, and Libya and other countries liberated by the Arab Spring have begun the long process of democratic reform, while the U.S. and many other Western countries hope that radical Islamist groups don’t use elections simply to replace one brand of despotism for another.
Tragedy in Japan
On March 11, an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, killing thousands, dislocating hundreds of thousands, and having some effect on millions of people.
More than a half million Japanese have lost or were forced to evacuate their homes. Nearly 70,000 of the evacuees had fled homes near three nuclear reactors rocked by explosions that sent workers scrambling to prevent dangerous radiation leaks. Authorities warned another 140,000 residents to stay inside an explosion erupted at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
The northeastern region was already reeling from the quake and tsunami that likely killed at least 10,000 people, and swept homes, cars, businesses, boats, and debris out to sea. Aid workers reported that shelters were overflowing with quake victims and running dangerously low on vital supplies like food and water.
Hospital workers said they were running out of medicine to treat chronically ill and elderly patients in the fastest aging nation in the world. (More than 20 percent of Japan’s population is over 65.) Rescue workers struggled to reach victims throughout the northeast, as bodies continued to wash ashore. Japanese officials asked USAID (the U.S. government agency that responds to humanitarian disasters) to coordinate search-and-rescue help. The agency had dispatched two teams of 144 specially trained rescue workers and 12 search dogs. The USS Ronald Reagan — an aircraft carrier that had been en route to South Korea during the quake — served as a refueling base for Japanese helicopters.
Aid groups struggled to reach victims, as The Chronicle of Philanthropy estimated that donors worldwide had given at least $12 million to relief agencies for Japan in the first three days. The Salvation Army—a U.S.-based organization that has worked in Japan since 1895—reported that three emergency relief teams were working in quake-affected areas by Monday. One of the teams is assisting residents evacuating from the nuclear power plant zone. Another team pressed far north into Sendai, one of the cities closest to the quake’s epicenter. The group reported that the normally six-hour trip from Tokyo to Sendai took 20 hours.
Samaritan’s Purse workers were on their way to Sendai just days after the earthquake. The North Carolina-based group partnered with Japanese churches to deliver aid to affected areas. Those partnerships are crucial: Church leaders obtained permits for the aid agency to enter the disaster zone—a critical step in reaching victims. The church leaders also have arranged trucks to transport relief supplies. Back in the United States, the aid group is filling a 747-cargo jet to deliver more supplies to the region later this week.
Another group—Christian Relief, Assistance, Support and Hope (CRASH)—is working with the Japanese Evangelical Missionary Association to deliver aid to a network of churches across the region. The group reported that it deployed survey teams by train, car, and motorcycle to assess the damage, and said the workers face a complex challenge: Communication is difficult and cell phone networks are unreliable, while gas, electricity, and food supplies are scarce in many affected areas. CRASH workers said that Japanese churches across the country had volunteered to help with the efforts. (Less than 2 percent of Japan’s population identifies itself as Christian.)
After meeting with CRASH, missionaries with Mission to the World (MTW)—the mission agency for the Presbyterian Church in America—sent teams to assess needs in the disaster zone. MTW missionary Bob Drews reported that his team delivered 1,000 liters of water and 60 liters of fuel to the town of Iwaki-Shi, and supplied a shelter near a church housing 100 quake victims. (The residents said no other official help or supplies had arrived.) MTW reported that Japanese church members had provided most of the supplies for delivery and helped load the transports.
Other missionaries offered assistance with even fewer supplies: The International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention reported that the Qualls—a missionary family of six living in Sendai—have no electricity, gas, or running water. Donna Quall reported that grocery stores were running low on supplies. “Stores only allowed families to spend up to 1500 yen [about $15],” Quall told IMB. “They divided the food into bags that were 500 yen each. We bought a meat bag, a drink bag, and a cereal bag.”
Despite the family’s low supplies, Quall said they delivered small care packages to other families in their neighborhood: “We don’t have much, but we wanted to let people know we care.” The Qualls are showing they care in another sacrificial way: Despite offers of evacuation from the area, the family has decided to stay. “I want people to pray for us,” said Quall. “But I also want them to pray for those in life or death situations. Pray for open hearts.”
Though the recovery has commenced with amazing speed, one lasting effect of the tsunami could be its impact on Japan’s nuclear power plants. Most of Japan’s nuclear power plants are set along the coast, where ocean water can help cool down any problems inside a reactor. But, as the tsunami wave pounded the plants last week and knocked out back-up diesel generators designed to pump in water, several reactors faltered. More than one boiling water reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power station experienced explosions and other problems in its fortress-like defense mechanisms. Radiation released from the plant has made large sections of coastal Japan uninhabitable.
That said, six months later, on the same day that Americans mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Japanese citizens were continuing life in disciplined Japanese fashion. In most heavily damaged towns, streets were clear, and workers had achieved impressive feats: Hundreds of destroyed cars that once floated through nearby Ishinomaki now sit in neat piles in local junk yards. Methodically crushed debris fills mountainous piles of rubble near the shore, complete with ventilation systems to prevent combustion.
The tragedy in Japan was not the only time Christian groups stepped up to provide help to the hurting. Dozens of tornadoes spawned by a powerful storm system wiped out entire towns across a wide swath of the South in the spring, killing more than 248 people, and officials said they expect the death toll to rise. The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team had staff on the ground in Birmingham within hours of the tornado hits. Chaplains were addressing the emotional and spiritual needs of tornado survivors in and around Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. The Alabama-Louisiana-Mississippi (ALM) Division of The Salvation Army has mobilized 10 feeding units and a communications unit. Another 22 mobile feeding units including catering trucks, mobile kitchens, and a 20,000 meal per day full service field kitchen have been placed on standby.
Government Remains Open for Business
While nimble Christian groups responded quickly to the challenges facing them, the wheels of government turned more slowly.
With less than an hour to go before a midnight deadline on April 8, Washington’s top political leaders announced a budget deal, averting the federal government’s first shutdown in 15 years.
“We had an opportunity tonight to decide whether we wanted to repeat history, or make history,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Had we chosen to repeat history, we would have allowed a government shutdown. Instead we decided to make history by implementing . . . substantial reductions in spending.”
Senate Democrats and House Republicans finally agreed to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year while making about $39 billion in additional spending cuts.
House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the cuts “historic.” President Barack Obama, in a brief statement made at the White House Friday night, said the agreement would be the “largest annual spending cut in our history.”
But these cuts were not enough, not by a long shot. By year-end, we had seen debt-ceiling fights and the creation of a super-committee charged with making lasting cuts to the budget, which has ballooned in the past three years. The super-committee failed to reach an agreement on spending reductions, so automatic cuts imposed by the legislation to raise the debt ceiling kicked in. All the while, the media lamented that politics had become so dysfunctional that the government couldn’t get anything done – without pausing to contemplate that the runaway activities of the government might be the problem in the first place.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Cry
President Barack Obama and top military officials on July 22 certified the repeal of the long-standing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The 18-year old law preventing gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military formally ended on Sept. 20. The long anticipated change came amid at least one formal marriage by a military officer and assurances by top Defense Department officials that the change is inconsequential.
A lame-duck Congress last December voted to lift the ban during a Saturday vote just weeks before a new, more conservative Congress began its session. Obama then certified in July that the repeal would not harm military readiness. Plus, a 2010 Pentagon review that cited a low risk to military effectiveness in the aftermath of any repeal gave cover to many lawmakers who voted to end the policy
But a 30-page Defense Department document completed in April revealed that Pentagon officials who wrote the report might have deceived Congress. The Defense Department’s inspector general concluded that someone possessing “a strongly emotional attachment to the issue” and “likely a pro-repeal agenda” broke security rules and leaked misleading selections of the data to the media. Some Republican lawmakers and other conservatives continue to be worried about the long-term repercussions for both the military and society with the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Nonetheless, former and current troops celebrated at a San Diego bar, counting down the clock to midnight. A Navy lieutenant married his male partner at a ceremony in Vermont, publicly reciting their vows at midnight.
This is just one battle that will be waged in the new front opened up by the DADT repeal. Other targeted issues include personal privacy, marriage benefits, and religious rights of conscience.
Already this year, congressional lawmakers had to step in after a Navy memo declared that same-sex weddings could occur at chapels in states that recognize gay marriage. In response, the House Armed Services Committee in May approved legislation that explicitly prohibits U.S. military bases from being used to solemnize same-sex unions. The committee also approved a measure that bars military chaplains from officiating at gay marriages.
That Navy directive has since been revoked. But it reveals what now awaits the military and its chaplains with the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
“President Obama made a political promise to LGBT activists, and Defense Department appointees have created a shaky house of cards that is about to collapse,” said Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness.
Remembering 911
This year marked the 10-year anniversary of 911, and remembrances of the event dominated the news in early September.
A new 911 memorial was opened at Ground Zero, and events occurred around the country, but perhaps no event was more poignant than the one in Shanksville, Penn.
In January 2002, four months after the deadliest attacks in history on U.S. soil, a group of local volunteers started staffing the site of an abandoned coal strip mine where United Flight 93, the fourth airliner hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists on 9/11, crashed. The site had become the final resting place of 40 individuals from 11 states and three countries who decided to fight back.
For the last decade the crash site has consisted of a chain-link fence, Porta-Johns, and a makeshift museum housed in a nearby rusted metal shed with concrete floors. The building was last used as the command post for investigators in the weeks after Sept. 11.
Still people came—an average of 150,000 visitors annually—to this barely accessible spot in southwest Pennsylvania two miles from Shanksville and about 60 miles from Pittsburgh. To get here, visitors travel streets where American flags decorate the majority of houses.
These visitors have left behind so far about 40,000 tribute items: police badges, fireman’s hats, tiny flags with messages written on the white stripes, a purple heart, and even a brick from the seized Afghanistan compound of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. “Placed here in tribute to the first warriors of the Global War on Terror,” reads a note attached to the brick.
But now, in time for the 10th anniversary, this homemade shrine has received a National Park Service makeover. Officially opening on Sept. 10, the upgraded 2,220-acre Flight 93 National Memorial includes a two-mile processional drive to a landscaped field of honor. Soon this field will be ringed by 40 groves of trees (one for each victim).
All Shook Up
So where is America, in the year of our Lord 2011?
Duke University professor Mark Chaves says Americans are thinking less and less about religion. In American Religion: Contemporary Trends, Chaves uses data from four decades’ worth of General Social Survey results and the National Congregations Study, which he directs, to show how religious belief in the United States has experienced a “softening.”
Chaves says this softening affects everything from whether people go to worship services regularly to whom they marry. He adds that congregations are shrinking, and dissatisfaction with religious leaders is growing.
Sociologist Bradley Wright recently plotted survey data over the last 25 years that recorded what Americans say about the importance of religion in their lives. He discovered that the number of those who say it’s extremely important has grown slightly, along with those who say it’s not at all important. But the number of people who said it was “somewhat” important dropped from 36 percent to 22 percent in about 20 years.
Chaves says signs of religious vitality may be camouflaging stagnation or decline: “Reasonable people can disagree over whether the big picture story is one of essential stability or whether it’s one of slow decline. . . . Unambiguously, though, there’s no increase.”
So are we moving forward, or slipping backward? Was Congress’s reading of the Constitution on its first day in session in 2011, with its guarantees of liberty for us and for our posterity, a sign of hope for the future, or mere whistling past a graveyard? Was John Boehner’s promise not to keep kicking the can down the road fulfilled by the action and inaction of Congress this year?
Journalism is not history, and it is usually up to history to answer such questions. So we conclude our discussion of 2011 with one last bit of reportage, from which you may take what you will:
On Aug. 23 at about 1:51 p.m., Washington, D.C. was shaken by the largest earthquake to hith the East Coast since 1944. The 5.8-magnitude quake with an epicenter located only about 84 miles from Washington rattled thousands of workers out of their office buildings. Some pundits wondered if there was spiritual and philosophical significance to the fact that the only two buildings that sustained serious damage were the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral.
Because no one was injured in the quake, many commentators also allowed themselves to indulge in a bit of dark humor about it. One joke that circulated widely on the Internet might have unintentionally provided the best assessment of 2011. It went like this: The epicenter was near a cemetery in northern Virginia, caused by America’s founding fathers turning over in their graves. †