corrente

It actually pains me to call Robert Novak anything as flattering as "idiot," but I bow to Tresey for handing off an easy lead-in headline. This is from Monday, but I get behind on stuff during the week, and I haven't seen this cited anyplace else in the blogosphere so it may not reek of decay yet.

Of course this being Novak it reeks of other things: false piety, unattributed assertions, and a complete reversal of rightness in all forms. But if you reverse the sign, as they say in math, on all the value judgement-laden words, it's interesting:

WASHINGTON -- Before Congress left town Friday for its Fourth of July recess, Rep. Bill Thomas of California pulled off one of his patented legislative assassinations. Washington's most cunning parliamentarian, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Thomas eradicated the Freedom of Speech in Churches Act without openly opposing it. In the process, he fired an early shot in a destructive civil war looming for Republicans.

The bill would stop the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from using existing statutes to muzzle clergymen who talk politics in their churches. That stoppage is pressed by Christian conservatives, who say they have been discriminated against by federal enforcers. While the free speech initiative is supported by Republican leaders, Thomas made short work of it. He transformed the proposal into a hybrid that neither friend nor foe could support.

Thomas has brought into the open internecine warfare posing grave dangers for the Republican Party. A 13-term congressman who is the party boss of Bakersfield, Calif., he represents old-line Republicans who resent Christian conservatives entering their party in 1980 (and giving the GOP parity with Democrats). Efforts to expel these intruders will reach fever pitch next year if George W. Bush is defeated for re-election.

Read the link if you're actually interested in details on this maneuver, or happen to be feeling bulemic. But get a load of the end here:

Thomas is a secularist who in the past jousted with a fellow senior Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, a prominent Catholic layman, over federal aid to Catholic hospitals. A former college professor, Bill Thomas is entitled to his own views, but today's Republican Party relies on support not from secular Americans but from church-goers. Walter Jones, not intimidated by Thomas, told me: "Discretionary enforcement, primarily against conservative churches, of an unenforceable law is wrong and should not stand." That is a battle cry for the coming Republican civil war.

Catch the contrast there? Henry Hyde, "prominent Catholic layman." You can almost hear the heavenly choir open up at the mention of his name. Bill Thomas, "former college professor." Boo hiss! Cross the street to avoid him! Heathen for sure and probably a communist besides! Corrupter of the young! Probably has cooties too!

Bob Novak is a man who knowingly announced the name of an undercover American agent to the public, exposing her and everyone who ever talked to her to possible retribution up to and including death. Just the kinda guy I trust for moral evaluations.