One of the many examples of Right Wing distortion and disingenuousness comes when the concept of church-state separation is discussed. You have all heard this one -- "The separation of Church and State does not appear in the Constitution." The argument is that Thomas Jefferson invented the concept in an 1802 letter to a church group. This is, in a word, false. The First Amendment states expressly that the State can not be involved in religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .

Did anyone miss that? Congress (which means all government through the incorporation doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment) shall make NO LAW respecting establishment of religion. One more time, NO LAW. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Any ambiguity there? Is the plain meaning of the text in doubt?

But where does it say church/state separation? Repeat and rinse. NO LAW. The fact that the State can make no law on establishment of religion separates the State from religion absolutely and entirely. That is what the text plainly and unmistakably says. Now we all know the Supreme Court, in acts of activism that please the Right, decided that NO LAW did not really mean NO LAW. And we live with the Lemon test, more or less, today. But make no mistake, the First Amendment expressly separates that State from religion by prohibiting all laws regarding establishment of religion.

More.

A federal indictment has been handed down in Miami against former Liberian Chief Charles Taylor's son, Chuckie Taylor, also known as Charles McArthur Emmanuel.

The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor was indicted Wednesday on U.S. charges of committing torture as chief of a violent paramilitary unit during his father's regime, marking the first time a 12-year-old federal anti-torture law has ever been used, U.S. officials said.

The decision-makers at CNN must be disappointed to learn that appealing to right wing extremism hasn't helped the Headline News ratings:

As mentioned last week, six months ago Headline and MSNBC were running neck and neck, now it isn’t even a horse race. The addition to Headline’s primetime lineup of the outrageous Nancy Grace and the slightly demagogic Glenn Beck has done nothing to close the gap.

Slightly?

Perhaps the ratings will force CNN to notice that viewers would rather enjoy a mix of rationality, humor, and solid reporting than vicious attacks and unsubstantiated innuendo.

The bad news from Iraq keeps coming:

Ten American service members were killed from improvised explosive devices in Iraq on Wednesday. The news came hours after a mortar attack killed at least eight people and wounded dozens in the Sadr City Shiite district of the capital, police said.

In the 10 American deaths, five troops were killed in the north, and five were killed in Anbar province, a U.S. military official told NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski. No further details were immediately available.

In the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, it’s understandable that FEMA would give a higher priority to helping the needy than to assuring that they really were needy. It’s more difficult to excuse wasteful payment of fraudulent claims that came months after the hurricane dissipated.

A GAO audit shows that FEMA has an ineffective oversight process and therefore continues to pay fraudulent claims. FEMA has wasted or been cheated out of at least $1 billion. At the same time, it hasn’t always put the money where it’s really needed, resulting in a recent court order “to resume housing payments for thousands of people displaced by Katrina.”

Not all of the loss resulted from fraudulent claims. FEMA can’t seem to keep track of the equipment that its employees purchased:

Remember Operation Trick or Treat, a drug sting that netted 33 arrests in Texas over Halloween?

Grits for Breakfast reports the cases have been dismissed. The probable cause for arrests was based on a single snitch, and, big surprise, it turns out he lied.

Harrison County District Attorney Joe Black has dropped charges against 33 people arrested this past October in Operation Trick or Treat.

"Information came forward to our office that the informant utilized in this undercover operation had possibly misled and lied to officers during the investigation," Black said. "Secondly, my office nor any local law enforcement agencies want to participate in the prosecution of any individual based upon evidence which may have been illegally or fraudulently obtained."

About 20 percent of the cases were compromised, Black said, but a shadow was cast over the entire operation.

Did they learn nothing from Tulia?

Credit to David Ignatius and John Harris of the Washington Post for admitting mistakes and rededicating themselves to truthtelling.

Ignatius admitted:

In a column last week, I praised Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel for his prescient early warnings about the risks of U.S. involvement in Iraq. Some readers complained that for all his prescience, Hagel still voted to support the war, and that I was ignoring the many Democrats who were similarly wary of Iraq -- and who voted against war funding. These readers are right. Hagel took political risks expressing his concerns back in 2003, but so did Democrats who voted against the Iraq mission despite a vitriolic barrage from the administration.

I have been very hard on Mr. Ignatius. Fairness requires we acknowledge and thank Ignatius for this correction.

Similarly, and more importantly, John Harris accepts some critiques that have been levelled at the Media:

In my experience, the vast majority of political reporters approach ideological questions with what you might call centrist bias. . . . It took me a while to realize how this instinct for rationalist, difference-splitting politics can itself be a form of bias. . . Who needs a bunch of reporters popping off with their views? It is hard enough—and honorable enough—to aim to report and analyze politics fairly and with a disciplined effort to transcend bias. That is what we will do in this new venture.

Good for you and your new venture Mr. Harris. Credit to you for acknowledging mistakes. I look forward to seeing your future work.

Bump and Update: The report is out. WaPo coverage is here. The Wall St. Journal has the Executive Summary. (pdf) Excerpts are here.

Bush and Robert Gates say it's not the last word, just one of many ideas the Administration will consider.

****
Original Post:

With the precision of a swiss timepiece, the Iraq Study Group Report will be released today.

From the U.S. Institute for Peace:

A PDF version of the ISG report will be available for download after 11:00 AM EST on the websites of the U.S. Institute of Peace (www.usip.org), the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University (www.bakerinstitute.org), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (www.csis.org), and the Center for the Study of the Presidency (www.thepresidency.org).

December likely is the month that bloggers must balance the ledger sheet and reassess their time commitment to blogging because of the financial drain. How many hours were spent blogging, how much money did it cost in lost income from the day job and how much did the blog make from blog ads and donations? When they do, the blogosphere runs the risk of losing them. We may be raving activists, but we live in the same capitalist world that you do.

So, as you're putting a little something in the pocket of your paperperson, housekeeper, doorman, shoe shiner, hairstylist, secretary, whomever.....think about the bloggers whose sites you read day after day either for enjoyment or enrichment, and make a note to add them to your gift list. If ever there was a month to do it, this is it.

To give to TalkLeft, go here or here.

I was reading Marc Cooper's LA Times article on the resurgence of downtown Las Vegas, when I came across this:

[Mayor Oscar] Goodman, meanwhile, is pushing ahead with another of his brainchildren aimed at saving downtown. He's persuaded the city to raise $30 million in bonds funding to convert the historic Post Office and Federal Court House into what's commonly being called the "Mob Museum" — a possible rival to the Liberace Museum and Elvis-a-Rama, both of which prosper closer to the Strip.

Goodman is bickering with critics over how much of the new museum's focus should be, precisely, on mobsters and how much on the broader history. I think I'm with the mayor on this one. Make it about the mob — something you can't get elsewhere — and give people one more reason to come downtown and keep this treasured and threatened corner of Americana alive.

I'm with the Mayor and Marc. Make it about the mob. I love Las Vegas, both the faux luxe of the Strip and the faux seediness of downtown. But Oscar is Oscar, and any city that elects a Mayor that used to be a criminal defense lawyer, and then makes him a hero, should at least share the glitter with some of those who made his reign possible: his clients. There's only one Oscar, only one Las Vegas and both owe a debt, if only in a fantasy world, to the so-called "Mob."

Bring on the Mob Museum. I'll be there with my kid...just like I took him to Alcatraz in San Francisco. Fun is fun, and Las Vegas is, after all, the queen city of fun.

VP Dick Cheney's daughter Mary is pregnant. The co-parent is her long-time partner, Heather Poe.

I'm sure Dick and Lynn will say they are delighted and looking forward to grand-parenting their sixth grandchild.

Good for Mary and Heather. Since they now live in Virginia which has banned both gay marriage and civil unions, I hope they make time to lobby for equal rights. It sounds, however, like they are embracing a more traditional lifestyle where one parent works for the bucks while the other attends to the home.

Cheney, 37, was a key aide to her father during the 2004 reelection campaign and now is vice president for consumer advocacy at AOL. Poe, 45, a former park ranger, is renovating their Great Falls home.

Remember the Macomb County, Michigan woman who got 30 days in jail because her parties were too loud? The sentence is a joke, but you don't want to say that to the judge's face.

A 17-year-old woman was ordered to jail for 30 days for contempt of court for telling the judge, "You're a joke."

Same judge. Thirty days for a loud party, 30 for an insult. Another young man got 13 days for jaywalking.

Local residents are starting to notice District Court Judge Norene Redmond's excessive reliance on incarceration to punish minor offenses.