Hey GOP, the FBI was on the Russian case since the Cold War.

I would love to have seen Mueller or the Democrats argue the Republican challenges to Mueller because those will be floating around in the ether without much of a challenge. But let me deal with one. 

The FBI has had an ongoing investigation into Russian spying in the US since before the Cold War. Over the past decade, the best FBI team on counter-intelligence against the Russians was led by Peter Strzok. Strzok knew every intricacy of the Russian efforts as did most of his team. So when Papadoplous was identified as having been approached by a Russian spy, that was merely adding to what Strzok and the FBI already knew. 

The British counterpart to Strzok was Michael Steele. They knew each other because they shared intel as needed. So when Mitt Romney wanted intel on Trump, he hired a research group that went to the newly retired Michael Steele who sent a numbers of reports to Romney and to his friend, Peter Strzok, at the FBI. 

Strzok added that material to his already expansive files on Russian espionage being monitored and countered by his team. 

When Romney dropped out, the Clinton Campaign took up the research firm's work to help them, knowing the FBI was already on the case. 

The Republicans have no case trying to say it was Steele who started everything and blame Hillary for it. Even if the Steele material never came along, the FBI was long ago on the case and had enough to allow Pres. Obama to throw out two Russian troll teams working in the US, impose new sanctions on the Russians, and confiscate their mansions before he left office.

BTW, when the Strzok and Paige emails came out, Mueller immediately removed them from his team. Under Jeff Sessions, the rest of Strzok's anti Russian spy team was fired or removed without any reason given. Maybe the Republicans need to investigate THAT!

What is Trump's relationship to Putin?

My brother had a theory. When a new inexperienced officer took up his assignment, he sought out the most experienced non-com willing to work with him. My brother called the second man "the little sergeant." The little sergeant, if he was smart, stayed in the background but made sure his own interests were accommodated as well as giving the new officer some workable advice that the officer felt was a real help.

I believe that when he became President, Trump immediately chose Putin to be his "little sergeant.

Nearly every major foreign policy position Trump has taken has benefitted Putin. Abandoning NATO, undercutting the EU, pushing for Brexit, stopping the US/South Korea/Japan military exercises, ending the Iran and Paris deals, and ending our relationship with Cuba all are what Putin wants.

Even on domestic issues, Putin's agenda is visible. In terms of who Trump put on his cabinet, as Putin has oligarchs on his, Trump put millionaires and billionaires o

n his. Both are anti-free press, both replaced judges where they could, Intimidated opposing politicians, ignoring laws they do not like or that put limits on their authority. And Putin is a master at telling lies, describing how everything is going in glowing terms, trying to set the national dialogue on his own terms and having nothing to do with reality. Sound familiar?

So far, there has been one area that Trump has not followed Putin. Putin has no problem killing people he does not like. Trump has not intentionally tried to assassinate anyone yet.

Even on climate change, Trump has followed Putin almost like a puppy. Putin's reason? Russia's primary resources are oil and gas.

Maybe Trump is following Hitler's playbook but it is Putin that he can't wait to go see for private conversations . . . and Putin's suggestions about what to do next. Putin is Trump's "little sergeant."

"Broken girls blossom into warriors"

A conservative woman Facebook friend posted the following:

I immediately thought of the women in the border camps who struggled up the long journey from Central America, 80% of whom were raped along the way (if not in the custody of the CBP and ICE).  In the camps, they only have the toilet for running water and hardly any room to lie down.

The mistake the President and his supporters in Congress and elsewhere that they do not even begin to realize that these women have a spirit that they will never match.

First, the women will not forget who caused them the horror at the border.  Second, they will eventually get out.  Third, if they were smart enough and took enough initiative to undertake the journey here in the first place, they will organize and become a huge major force in American politics no matter what the President and his co-workers devise against them.

It may take a generation, but probably not.  They will have their African-American, Korean-American, Chinese-American, Hmong-American sisters to walk with them and their Hispanic sisters who have been here for a generation and are already in Congress!

The President should be welcoming and helping these refugees.  Instead, he is making them into warriors that he and others will face one day soon.

Our Litigious Age

History may look upon our part of Church history as a “litigious age.”  

I get that a lot from bishops who resent pastors who raise questions of law to get help from the Judicial Council.  Funny, but I don’t hear them complain about litigiousness when bishops bring formal complaints against pastors.  

They seem to be glad there is a judicial process set up by the General Conference so there is a way to fire those they think are bad pastors, according to their own evaluations.  And pastors are getting a lot more savvy about fighting unfair personnel practices, which is what they feel about how they are being treated. Indeed, with the introduction of the concept of “Fair Process” in 1992, the number of church judicial actions seems to have increased compared with the first 200 years of our denomination.

As I looked back on GC2019, I had a middle of the night revelation.  Resorting to law comes from having lost trust in one another.

I can easily argue that the law has always been needed.  Jesus quoted law and counted on it even when challenging it.  Regarding the first two hundred years in America, we have wedded ourselves to the concept of ordering Church life around a constitution in order to have a fall back position of what to do in case of confusion or perceived harm.  If brothers and sisters cannot resolve a disagreement, they could take it to the “Church” with an orderly way of formal debate based on prior agreements about the judicial/appellate process, with an agreement as to who and when and where a final decision could be made to which the contesting parties had to adhere.  

But even that formal debate process was not used all the time, as it seems to be nowadays.  

And now, thanks to GC2019, I anticipate it is going to get worse.  I see two major dynamics at work in our day.  One is the impatience of church leaders to do church their own way.  The second is the desire of some to have complete control.  

Those who follow my writing know immediately the first category is characteristic of the Council of Bishops as well as some individual bishops and other leaders.  Law and constitution are important to them only when it serves their purposes.  If the Discipline says something different than they want, then they defy or ignore it.  I’m talking tendencies here and fortunately not all Council of Bishops’ actions and  not all bishops and leaders are like that.  But enough have decided they know best and do it their own way.  And that triggers the litigiousness about which they complain.  

I have watched that phenomenon since 1960 and it never ends.  When General Conference votes a hedge against bad personnel practice, certain bishops find a way to get around it.  And a new round of litigiousness begins.

But what I have seen in the war to gain control over the denomination, most recently carried on in the passage of the “traditionalist” plan at GC2019 will push the use of courts outside of the denomination and into civil courts.  The hard line against homosexuality held by the “traditionalists” will tempt pastors and congregations identifying with both extreme wings of our Church to consider leaving and the terms of their separation will not be “amicable”  because of the wide variety of property issues.  And the harshness of the new personnel laws guarantee that the litigiousness will veer into state and federal courts.  It now will become a matter of civil rights of LGBTQI folks.

While we spend tremendous amounts of energy on that, the global warming crisis goes on unaddressed, the immigration crisis gets worse, and we inadvertently let income inequality become normalized.

As I said above, resorting to law comes from having lost trust in one another.  

We Christians have never agreed on everything with one another, even when nascent Christianity was Jesus and his twelve Disciples.  The separation of Paul and Barnabas was heart-breaking as was that of Wesley and Whitefield.  That the Church even exists is a testament to the fact that Christians have found ways to trust each other anyway.  

For all the dynamics that press on us, we set them aside to do missionary work.  The strangest theological bedfellows end up working together to serve a county jail.  We rediscover that there are things beyond us that we care about despite our differences. There are crises that need all of our varied gifts and experiences in order to be met and that we have to guard each others’ backs.  We know that when we have to, we can take on the view that once the hungry are fed, the thirsty get water, the sick are cared for, the naked are clothed, the strangers welcomed, and the prisoners visited, then we can look at our differences and “talk religion.”  

We may even discover we can postpone litigation until after that.

Until we regain that level of trust, our litigious age will continue.

The UMC "Split"???

If you come to me for scholarly attention related to the recent actions of the special-called 2019 General Conference, I will disappoint you.  I have read a number of articles in the main stream media, the church media, and on Facebook on the several sides of the controversy but have not followed all the possible wisdom imparted.  

There is a lot of fear, a lot of worry, that I think needs to be put into perspective.  

I have three points to share in hopes to take the anxiety over a potential split down a notch or three.

One, I think the “traditionalists” overplayed their hand, much like the Republicans have with their mindless support of President Trump.  Two, a split of consequence is not likely to happen in any case.  Nearly every congregation and annual conference is too split (or soon will be) to go one way or the other.   Three, legal wheels grind very slowly.  

One, many Americans and some people around the world who watch us closely are aware that under President Trump’s administration, the right has flexed its muscle because their advocacy of control and judgmentalism are not being discouraged.  As a result, Republicans in Congress have sat on their hands when it comes to realistic responses to the various wild and criminal actions of the President.  The most clear sign of where Republicans are in their radical approach to governance is in the realm of abortion rights, notably the passage of laws in their state legislatures that are anti-women,  Their presumption based on their sense of power has shown them to be so far from the middle that the losses the Republicans had in 2018 appear to be even more likely in 2020.  I see that the same drive by the right wing of our Church for control based on a wedge issue.  That drive motivates much of the legislation that the Judicial Council sorted through recently but the General Conference passed anyway.  

I’ve contended that the “traditionalists” in the UMC face a rapidly changing social milieu so that this year may have been their last real chance to make a permanent change (they believe) in the United Methodist Church.  America had swung from anti-gay to marriage equality in less than a decade.  And because of social media and international travel, the prospect of changes in Africa and Asia are likely to be even more rapid.  As I write, the Philippines has a significant pro-gay movement going.  And my contacts with Africans encourages me to believe the more they know, the more they are unlikely to support anti-gay legislation as soon as 2020.  Notice that the votes at General Conference 2019 were close.  

I am sure both sides pressing the homosexuality issue will do all they can to get their delegates elected for 2020’a General Conference.  The dynamic of change on the view of homosexuality is going on world wide now, mostly the younger generation against the older generation.  Most of the legislation supporting the “traditionalists’” position does not go into effect until Jan. 1, 2020, with one exception, and within months after that, the 2020 General Conference will go over much of the same ground with possibly different results.   I think the conservatives have overplayed their hand.

That doesn’t mean we will avoid a great deal of pain and disruption in our church life, not dissimilar to what we face in our political life in the U. S..  As long as “controllers” (those with the psychiatric issue of having to bring everyone to their point of view and have to be the only ones who are right) have any power, only dissension and other harms will result from it.  The struggle for reasonableness is not over but it may prevail much sooner than the “traditionalists” wish.

Two, many older experienced people just shake their heads as they watch the sound and fury of those most outspoken on both sides.  For one thing, there are few geographic signs in the United States that the Church can be split regionally as it was split before the Civil War.  At that time, the southern states were a geographic focus for slavery.  While certain counties in the deep south remained loyal to the Union and did not join in the war of the rebellion with the rest in their state, the denomination had a strong basis for splitting.  No such thing is true now, at least  in Europe and the U. S.  There are some churches that have strongly taken sides for and against homosexuality.  Some have actually chosen to leave the denomination already.  But by and large, possibly with the exception of certain ethnic congregations still under the influence of the older generation, most congregations are very mixed.  They would have a terrible time making up their mind to even take a vote to align with one faction let alone split away from the denomination.  The same is true of annual conferences.  The chances of there being a wholesale leaving of the denomination by one side or the other is highly unlikely.  Oh, the feelings can be very high and individuals within nearly all churches can get very upset over the disagreement, but most United Methodists will be pretty slow to even hold meetings to discuss the issues to say nothing of the option of leaving the Church.

I am aware that certain pastors have cultivated their churches to understand the issues from their point of view to the point of becoming identifiable to one side or the other.  I know from long experience that even in those churches, there are people who are not all in with that one side and do not like being forced on this issue to take sides.  As in the parts of the world that tended to support the 

“traditionalists’” legislation, the growth against anti-gay beliefs is very strong among the younger generation even in local churches.  

I also think that science and experience are taken seriously by more and more people as gays have come out of the closet.  Those who feel there is no real problem would prefer not to get into a fight about what for them is settled.  

I really do not see a massive shift of whole congregations or annual conferences into a new denomination nor into other denominations.  

Three, it has been pointed out in many places that a split on any scale within the denomination will tend to have long dragged-out legal hassles.  Who gets the Publishing House?  Who gets Wespath (the Board of Pensions)?  Who gets the properties, especially the really valuable sites in New York and Washington?  Who gets the seminaries?  

But the area not really thought through in the new legislation is that each allegation against a pastor or bishop will still end up having to be handled by fair process and appeals.  Each will likely be looked at in terms of the viewpoints of the annual conference and officers handling the respective cases.  And what may appear to be “egregious” to one side may appear to be reasonable and fair to the other when tested in our denominations’ court and appeal systems.  A bishop built a huge case unrelated to homosexuality against a pastor only to see it stretch out to nearly three years.  Making the laws more rigid, as the traditionalists have done, is likely to trigger stronger legal responses.  In this era when change occurs rapidly because of modern technology, three years is a very long time and the milieu can change dramatically while a case is winding slowly through the judicial system.  I cannot see the judicial system speeding up despite the efforts of the “traditionalists.”

Prior to the 2019 General Conference, I argued that millions of dollars and hours were being used to deal with an issue that pales in the face of the most recent projections by climate sciences that we have only a decade to change our carbon-based world economy or the climate will be so damaged it will lead to our extinction.   The next three years of that decade are going to be critical for humanity’s survival, to say nothing of the shift in thinking on homosexuality. 

In conclusion, I think the “traditionalists” won’t be able to handle their own overreach, the distribution for the various parties is too wide for any kind fo coherent split, and the very legalities the traditionalists have applied to their agenda against homosexuality (no longer just the practice of homosexuality) will take years.  

Of all I have read about the fears of the denomination splitting, in light of my observations, I like the following statement by the Rev. Dr. Chomingwen Pond, retired pastor, for missionary, and former professor of theology at Africa University:

“What we need now is the Gamaliel Solution (Acts 5:34-39). When Peter and the Apostles were arrested and the religious leadership wanted them killed, Gamaliel, a highly respected teacher of Israel, reminded them that they had faced similar situations at least twice before, and that when the leader was killed, their followers melted away. So in this case be careful. If it is of human origin, it will disappear of its own accord; if it is of God, it will endure--and you may find you are fighting God!”

The Mueller Report

A careful reading of the Mueller Report makes it clear that a Justice Department rule that the President may not be indicted for crime while in office was the major factor in why Mueller could not indict President Trump.

As a solid "rule of law" guy, that left Mueller with the problem of listing all the things he has found so far against the President so that Congress and the American people could look at the list and decide whether or not the President was a criminal.

Ordinarily, Special Counsels take several years to do an investigation.  The Watergate case was not finished until two years after President Nixon resigned. In this case, it appears that when Attorney General Barr took over, the investigation was halted before Mueller could finish.  There are many unanswered questions because so many of the witnesses lied or had destroyed evidence.  

Proving someone has lied takes a long time.  With the Mueller probe shut down, it is likely that there are some things we will never know.

All that aside, there are some things we do know.  So many details in the Mueller report should leave everyone, not just the Democrats, unsettled. The Mueller Report opens with the stark statement that Russia interfered with and influenced the 2016 election.  And so far, while every American (and major international) agency related to intelligence gathering has said the same thing, the President has done nothing about it it.  He believes Russian President Vladimir Putin who has denied Russian interference.  And there is no serious effort by the Trump administration to do anything about it.  What is worse, every major intelligence officer with expertise in the Russian interference in the FBI has been fired or taken off the case.

Russia used their computers to "invade" America and Europe, stirring up old prejudices, stealing information, manipulating voter registrations, and spreading misinformation.  Who benefitted?  The Republicans did.  President Trump did.  It is no wonder they do not want to have Mueller continue his probe into the Russian influence.  

Without firing shot, Russia has gotten NATO to be weaker, the international climate accord disrupted, American allies facing tariff wars that weaken both American and their economies, and have threatened the dissolving of partnerships and alliances that have kept peace in the western world for seventy five years.  

And they have left America so divided that we may never recover, at least not in our life time.  And the Republicans will blame, not the Russians, but the Democrats.  And the Democrats cannot straighten things out on their own.  Even if the 2020 election is overwhelmingly won by the Democrats, there will still be Republicans who will never believe the Russians did it.  Never.  

So sad.  So very sad. 

Neil DeGrasse Tyson Interviews Stephen Colbert