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I had a few random thoughts after seeing this movie tonight (and previewing it at home on Monday), talking to a (very) few people who saw it and then heading back here to write. Because it likely won't be screened around here again anytime soon, I've gone ahead and thrown in a few spoilers. If you want to be surprised, read no farther.

(CORRECTION: Film will be screened at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Main Theater at N.C. School of the Arts, 1533 S. Main St. in Winston-Salem. Also, you will soon be able to buy it off the Web site.)

No, really.

Stop now. Go read the funnies or something.

OK, here we go.

I know I'm supposed to neither notice nor care about this, being a text guy and all, but the cinematography was outstanding. Anyone who thinks filmmaker Adam Zucker was trying to make us look bad could not possibly be correct in the literal sense.

Paid admission at the Carolina Theatre was 206, most of whom were middle-aged or older and most of whom hung around for the Q&A. I had to leave before the Q&A ended, at which point it had gone on more than half as long as the film.

Some of what our city's Establishment leaders had to say:

• Jim Melvin, former mayor and longtime mover and shaker, appeared on camera with a baseball bat across his desk. You'd probably have to be from 'round here to know that the bat symbolizes his (successful) efforts to get a new minor-league baseball stadium built downtown, but I suspect to some viewers who aren't from around here that it'll conjure up a Bull Connor image that he didn't intend. Whether Zucker intended that, I couldn't say.
• Melvin estimated that a poll taken today would show roughly 85 percent of Greensboro not supporting the truth-and-reconciliation effort. He also added, contra a civil jury's finding, that the city had had no involvement with the shootings. Finally, referring to people involved with the truth-and-reconciliation movement, he said, "We don't have much time for these people."
• Later in the film, Melvin touts his lifelong residence in Greensboro, claims he knows what's going on in town and adds, "I don't need some commission to come in and tell me what's going on."
• At-large council member and possible mayoral candidate Florence Gatten said of Nelson Johnson that "a leopard never changes his spots." She added that as a Presbyterian she always hopes for reform, but said, "I haven't seen it." Later in the film she said, "Greensboro is like a 1950s town in a Ziploc bag with the zip lock closed." Some audience members mocked her remarks.(Full disclosure: Florence and I attend the same church.)
• Outgoing Mayor Keith Holliday suggested that the truth-and-reconciliation movement was being driven by fewer than 50 people who could never accept what happened and never move on. Feel free to see the film for yourself and decide whether the images confirm or disprove his assessment. Oh, and he also expressed concern about how this whole thing might affect business recruiting.

One other technical thing that struck me: There was no spoken narration except for a few voiceovers from interview subjects who would pop up onscreen a second or two later, and just a few paragraphs of text at the very beginning and the very end. It was real people saying real things. Sure, you can wonder what Zucker left in and left out, and what questions he asked to prompt the comments he got. I do. But there was no omniscient voice telling you what you were seeing or what to think about. I know squat about filmmaking, but I prefer documentaries that let subjects talk to me over the other kind.

To those I'd asked to interview after the film and didn't: I apologize that we didn't get to connect. I had to leave about 9:15 to make deadline, at which point the Q&A was still going strong.

That's all for tonight.

Here's some additional information on the conference mentioned in my article in today's N&R.

Submission guidelines: Send abstracts (summaries describing the form and type of work proposed) in Microsoft Word format to Stephen Schulman, assistant professor of philosophy at Elon University, at sschulman@elon.edu by March 12.

Include: Proposed title of the work, author or authors’ name(s), institutional affiliation (if any), e-mail address and phone number.

Possible subjects: Issues arising from the events of Nov. 3, 1979, and their aftermath, including but not limited to justice, the justice system, social activism, race/class issues and government acountability,

Criteria for inclusion: Relevance to intended audience, clarity and substance, with consideration for diversity.

Questions? Contact Stephen Schulman, assistant professor of philosophy, Elon University, sschulman@elon.edu; Spoma Jovanovich, assistant professor of communications studies at UNCG, s_jovano@uncg.edu; or Jill Williams, guest professor at Guilford College, williamsje@guilford.edu.

I chatted earlier today with Steve Sumerford of the Greensboro Public Library, which is holding the next Town Hall Meeting on March 11 to discuss the now-defunct Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report on the 1979 Klan-Nazi killings.

Steve sees the library's role as a bit of a balancing act: The library believes this is an important document the community needs to discuss. But it also wants to be an honest broker in any discussion that does occur. And as a part of that, he's struggling with how to get people into the discussion who oppose the report's recommendations, even people who don't believe the report merits attention.

That's a tough nut to crack. Just by suggesting that there be discussion on a particular issue, the library is staking itself out, even if few institutions in this community are better qualified.

But its moderating role is well-established -- and, so far as I know, hsa been generally well-thought-of -- on subjects ranging from the anti-Islamic cartoons published in Danish newspapers to previous One City, One Book discussions. We've been down the path of community discussion before, and to the extent the library has played a role, the community has benefited.

As I blogged at the time, the previous Town Hall meeting in December was populated almost exclusively by people who supported the truth-and-reconciliation process and supported most, if not all, of the report's recommendations. I wondered then whether the discussion wouldn't have been more valuable with other points of view in the room.

Sumerford's wondering the same thing, and he's wrestling with how to make that happen.

Some commenters here and elsewhere have suggested that if you've publicized the event and opened the doors, then you've done all you need to do, that there will always be people whose agenda is to stand outside and lob grenades.

And there will. But in response to that, I'd like to raise four questions:

1) What if you don't want to settle for all you need to do and would rather try to do all you can do?

2) If it's possible to bring the grenade throwers inside and point their grenades back outside -- leaving them to disagree with the people inside who, quite literally, have their backs [and inserting crude metaphor here about camels, tents and urination] while directing the worst they have to offer away from their fellow citizens -- wouldn't that be better for this community?

3) Are those who support this process, if not all the report's findings and recommendations, certain that they can learn nothing from the grenade throwers?

4) And, finally, if you are or have been a grenade thrower thoughtful, if impassioned, critic of the process, the report and/or its findings and have not taken part in public discussions up 'til now, isn't it time you did? Your fellow citizens want to hear from you -- not just on a comment page at Ed's place or wherever.

The event is 4-6 p.m. Sunday, March 11, at the main library, 219 N. Church St. Yes, that's the day of the ACC men's basketball final, but that game starts at 1, so you have no excuse. ;-)

One of the issues raised during and after Tuesday night's public meeting on the Guilford College assault case was reporting a crime: Who should do it, when, how; what the obligations of police are when a crime is reported, and so on.

First, the obligations of the police are pretty clear. And as I noted earlier, the obligations of the victim are just as clear, although the victim's sense of urgency understandably might be mitigated by a more pressing need to, first, ensure survival.

No, it's everyone else I want to ruminate on, and ultimately lecture, because I heard at least one thing that left me feeling pretty grumpy that I think I can talk about without giving anyone a case of the journalistic-ethics vapors.

At Guilford, we have a situation in which an unknown but apparently significant number of people witnessed a fight. In this fight, from all accounts, some people were hitting some other people in the head with something hard -- brick, rock, construction rebar, I don't know, but certainly nothing you could wash your face with.

As anyone who has seen such an assault in real life as opposed to just watching cartoon violence on TV knows, these things never end well. And yet, so far as is known, nobody called 911.

I heard some people say that the culture at Gulford College encourages people to try to deal internally with incidents. That's not unique to Guilford, as I observed. But here's a fact: We have institutions designed to deal with violent felonies. And here's another fact: Private, Quaker-affiliated liberal-arts colleges are not among those institutions, no matter how qualified they might be for other missions. And, finally, here's an opinion, a bit of an elaboration on what I said in the previous thread: If you see someone hit someone else in the head with something hard, you need to contact the type of institution designed to deal with that type of action. That means paramedics with an ambulance, because someone with a head wound can go from woozy but coherent to dead damn quick, and it means a cop with a gun, because someone who already has put a hole in someone's head might well figure he has nothing left to lose.

In short, you need to call 911.

But I also heard something Tuesday night that requires a response, and that was the claim that some people might have been so traumatized by what they saw that they have not yet been able to report what they saw ... to GPD or anyone else.

Mentally, at the time, I rejected that argument both as to its substance and to its implications. After a bit of sleep reflection, I decided that, while that kind of PTSD certainly happens, it still doesn't justify even temporary silence in the real world.

When you were growing up, you probably wanted to be an adult, and so you observed all the conventions and took all the steps that are part and parcel of trying out for the grownup team. And congratulations! You made the team. You've got the jersey. The coach knows your name.

But despite whatever you might have inferred or been told, being on the grownup team isn't a sentence to 50 years of riding pine, even if that's all you want.

With the rights of adulthood, you assume certain obligations. Some are spelled out in the law, like jury duty. Others are less tangibly defined, but no less important.

To continue the bad sports metaphor (the prerogative of every middle-aged man) and bring it into a Quaker context, as much as you might just want to ride the bench, sometimes the spirit, or Spirit, isn't just going to move you, it is going to call your number, pat you on the butt and send you into the game.

If you were there on Jan. 20, you're in the game, the ball has come your way, and I'm pretty sure the Spirit doesn't want to hear you whine about it. I know I don't.

Not to sound like a premature curmudgeon, but right now tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines your age in Iraq don't care how traumatized you might be by what you might have seen, because they're seeing worse. For that matter, many people your age are more badly traumatized by things they experience in this country every day than you were -- they see homicides, suicides, wrecks, child abuse, spousal abuse, industrial accidents, you name it. Many of them never get over what they see. It's awful. I get that. In many cases, there is nothing we can do to prevent experiencing such a thing; in no case is there any real way to prevent the horrible effects even witnessing the experience will have.

Having had a few such folks tell me their stories over the years, I ache for all of them. And believe it or not, I ache for you, too -- IF you have stepped up and gotten in touch with the police, nagged them if you had to, and made sure they understood exactly what you saw, what you do and do not know about what happened on campus on the early morning of Jan. 20, and how they and prosecutors can get back in touch with you when and if necessary until this whole mess is laid out. It isn't just whoever the victims of Jan. 20 were who are counting on you. It's all of us.

Once you have taken that step, then by all means go get counseling or do whatever it is you need to do to mitigate the damage that your experience has done to you. I'm absolutely not being snarky now. Just, please, first go meet that minimum obligation of any grownup, even a newly minted one, who was there that night and saw what happened.

Now, you kids get off my lawn.

There was a whole passel of stuff covered at tonight's meeting that we obviously didn't have room for in the print edition. If you'd like to use this thread as a place to discuss any of it, please jump in with a comment. At the moment I'm tired and going home soon, but before I do, a few quick thoughts:

-- I heard, off the record, before the meeting from a couple of people in the community who saw this event as a desperate reach for relevance by the Guilford Truth and Community Reconciliation Project, which, on the surface, has little connection with what's going on at Guilford College. Perhaps. The number of current or former Guilford students, and others with connections to the Guilford community, who spoke suggest that that's an unfair criticism. So did one of their common themes: that the college, intentionally or through neglect, has failed to provide such a forum on its own.

-- There were a lot of criticisms leveled at the administration tonight. Reporters hate this: Allegations are leveled at a public meeting, near deadline, with little time to try to get any kind of reaction and no time whatever to try to assess the validity of the charges independently. Sometimes people are accurate and sincere; sometimes they're neither. (Full disclosure: Guilford spokesman Ty Buckner and I both attend First Presbyterian Church. He sings in the choir. I, out of an abundance of Christian love for my fellow children of God, do not.) Under those circumstances, we have two choices. Both suck: Report unverified allegations, albeit allegations made by name in a public meeting, or don't tell the public what we saw and heard. I went with Door No. 1. Fortunately, we'll be publishing another edition Thursday, and another Friday, and so on. Also, I hear we have a Web site.

-- One speaker suggested that alcohol -- specifically, underage drinking -- probably played a bigger role in the Jan. 20 fight than has been generally acknowledged.

-- I covered tonight's meeting because I'm covering the GTCRP. I'm not covering the Guilford assault case, although I've pitched in a time or two. Obviously there were some angles tonight that cry out for follow-up. I'll be leaving I've left my recommendations with The Powers That Be before going home tonight. Feel free to add yours, or any other thoughts you have on the meeting, the case, or the larger issues raised by both, in the comments.

UPDATE: I wanted to take the blog owner's prerogative of offering one bit of unsolicited advice. Before I do, I want to make very clear that I did not witness the events at Guilford, have not spoken directly to anyone who did, have not covered that story directly and am not speaking specifically of what happened there when I say the following, which is based on my Scouting experience, my own college experience and a half-dozen years of police reporting as much as anything else:

If you ever see someone hitting someone else in the head with a hard object, it is never a bad idea to call 911 first, then any other authority that might be around. For one thing, it gets paramedics there faster should they be needed. For another, it's a lot easier and more pleasant to clear up a misunderstanding on the spot than to try to jump-start a criminal investigation well after the event.

Just sayin'.

Our treatment of local reaction to the president's State of the Union address in Wednesday's paper looks -- according to the version I'm now seeing in the system, shortly before we go to press -- really, really good.

And the quotes from the folks who graciously agreed to review the issues and the speech and give us their insights are -- again, according to the version I'm now seeing in the system, shortly before we go to press -- really, really short.

Frequently that's just a fact of life in print.

But that's why we have the Internet!! It gives us theoretically unlimited space!

(Well, that's why *I* have the Internet. I don't know why you have the Internet, and until your lawyer gets here you really don't need to tell me.)

I don't need unlimited space, but because our volunteers were so gracious, I did want to post ... well, their titles and a complete sentence or two, anyway.

EDUCATION/NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: Essentially, I think most educators and Americans would agree the intent of the No Child Left Behind law is commendable and support its goals -- highly qualified teachers, high standards, and an accountability system with the hope of educating all children. The issue with the legislation is not its intent but its implementation. As currently implemented, the legislation becomes nothing more than unfunded political rhetoric. Congress and the Senate are proposing major cuts to the legislation which further complicates its implementation. While facing these cuts, we have young children struggling to grow academically, and teachers and administrators trying their very best to meet the standards without the resources they need to do so. The NCLB accountability system will hold students, teachers, and administrators responsible for not meeting standards but conveniently exclude politicians and legislators for not providing the funds and resources necessary to help children learn. If we are going to use an assessment and evaluation process with our students then we must use the same process in the evaluation of the implementation of the legislation to determine where the gaps and flaws lie rather than simply pointing to the "easy-to-target" scapegoats (i.e., students, teachers, administrators).

Certain parts of the legislation are also extremely flawed. In theory, having a struggling student move from a "bad" school to a school that meets AYP seemingly solves the problem. However, there are social and economic issues for which the legislation does not account. Who says these students who move to new schools will be provided the quality instruction necessary to achieve? Who says these students will be met with "open arms" by their new teachers, administrators, or peers? The legislation does not account for transitioning issues. Moreover, what happens to those teachers and the administration in the "bad" schools? Do they migrate to the schools meeting AYP and how does this migration impact these schools? Rather than correcting the problem, the legislation seems to approve running from it. In essence, we treat the symptoms but not the disease, which is apparently systemic.

Parents and taxpayers should demand more focus be placed on student learning, which is not promised by an emphasis on testing. The legislation places too much emphasis on one testing measurement each year, which is a small snapshot of a student's ability on a given day. From these results, monumental decisions regarding a child's livelihood are made. Focusing on one measurement violates principles of assessment where we know we must triangulate data to draw sound inferences. These are the types of arguments parents, educators, and taxpayers must make as the No Child Left Behind legislation moves forward.

-- Anthony Graham, assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, N.C. A&T School of Education.

I do, however, think the focus on accountability is very important! And I agree with Mr. Bush that we need more funding for educational programs. Low performing students need more resources and quality educational options. They need master teachers and skilled administrators. Simply moving students in "failing" schools to other schools rarely solves the problem.

In my opinion, the most important action we need to take was not mentioned by Mr. Bush. I believe we need to return respect and support to our classroom teachers. We need to let them do what they were trained to do and we need to hold them responsible for their actions.

-- Betty Epanchin, Professor and Associate Dean for Teacher Education and School Relationships and Director, The Teachers Academy; UNCG

I like the idea of having the lofty goal of making sure that all children get a proper education. I'm still not sure (President Bush is) prepared to back it up with concrete proposals that will strengthen the public school system. What I heard was talk about more money, and I think funding is important if you're going set this goal, but in the same context I heard him talking about, or at least hinting around about, vouchers, which I think tend to undermine public school system. ...

I think there's a lot of things that could be done with funding by the government to help retain good teachers because teacher retention is a problem. If you're going to keep kids engaged, you need good teachers, and too many teachers leave school because (of low pay). ... I've never heard anyone at the national level suggest providing tax cuts or tax credits for teachers that might make it more (financially) attractive to them. And generally, school districts all over the country ... have a lot of infrastructure needs that need to be met. You can see that right here in Guilford county. If you're going to really make an effort to educate all these children ... you need to pump more money in. That's inconsistent with the goal of trying to balance the budget, but you've got to have priorities and I think this would be one of them.

-- Richard Rawls, American Government and Civics teacher (and former trial lawyer), Dudley High School, Greensboro

ENERGY: I think (reducing gasoline usage via alternative fuels is) highly unrealistic for a number of reasons. You need to have corporate investment into infrastructure for production and delivery of needed fuel. We do know that capital budgets and decisions take a great deal of time. The oil industry and other related energy vendors have to put needed resources in place in order to create this delivery system. ...

There is nothing new in this statement of the president. He declared before -- I believe he used the term "addicted to oil" (last year). Programs that could have been put in place last year would have been a very good indication of whether he was serious. ...

(When President Bush took office), total oil imports accounted for 58 percent (of U.S. oil consumption; now, it's 65 to 69 percent. ... There was nothing in his speech last year or in what is coming out today [Tuesday -- Lex] to suggest that this call is realistic or that it could succeed.

-- Dr. Raid Riad Ajami, Charles A. Hayes Distinguished Professor of Business, Bryan School of Business, UNCG

UPDATE: i believe all the proposals related to energy in the President’s speech are socially admirable, technically feasible and politically achievable.

This is one area where the president’s goal and the Democratic Party’s demand are compatible.

Therefore, it is highly possible that the White House could reach a compromise with the congressional leadership to implement these policy objectives.

The easiest way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel is to conserve energy and increase the energy efficiency of the automobiles we are driving.

For the past 20 years the automobile industry has resisted [efforts] to increase the fuel economy of the vehicles they manufacture.

As a result, Japanese manufacturers have been gradually taking over their markets around the world.

Fossil fuels are not going to be around forever. We need to develop an alternative fuel. The president’s proposal is an excellent one to get us moving in that direction.

The President needs to show some accomplishment for the next two years, either by winning the war in Iraq or by implementing some of his social agenda.

I believe it is more likely that he will be able to implement some these energy policies, if not all. Consequently, the country will benefit from these initiatives.

-- Abolghasem Shahbazi, professor and director, biological engineering program, Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design, N.C. A&T. (Professor Shahbazi's remarks reached us too late for today's paper.)

HEALTH CARE: The President made two major proposals related to health care reform in his State of the Union Address tonight. The first would change the taxation treatment of health insurance by providing a $15,000 deduction for families and $7,500 for single persons. This would replace the current tax deductibility of premiums for health insurance provided by employers and would make the value of the health insurance provided taxable (so that insurance worth more than $15,000/year would increase the taxes paid by families). Second, federal money currently paid to hospitals will be redirected to the states in the form of grants for insurance programs for the currently uninsured.

My bottom-line assessment is that these are small and largely ineffective proposals from a tired administration that has run out of ideas. There are some potentially beneficial aspects. For instance, individuals will be discouraged from obtaining certain types of overly generous insurance. However, they will not help with the two main problems with our health care system – the large number of uninsured individuals and high and rapidly increasing costs of medical care.

The idea of using tax incentives to increase insurance rates is an old one, but with little evidence that it will be effective. One big issue is that the biggest tax benefits go to those with highest tax rates, generally wealthy individuals who already have insurance. The uninsured tend to be less well-off and have lower tax rates. As a result, they gain less from the subsidy. Depending on the exact details of the program, it could have other undesirable effects. For instance, one interesting feature is that the tax deductibility applies for anyone with insurance, regardless of its cost. Unless carefully structured, this could result in incentives for the uninsured to obtain minimal amounts of insurance just for the tax breaks. In this case, they would still not be covered for most expenses and providers would still probably have to provide large amounts of uncompensated care. The proposal to redirect funds from hospitals to states is harder to evaluate but is likely to face fierce resistance. In any case, it probably would have only small effects.

The U.S. health care system is in need of big changes. Important issues that need to be addressed include the following: Should the government negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to reduce drug prices to the levels paid in other countries? Should the U.S. adopt a single-payer system? If not, how should we institute policies that will lead to universal insurance? How do we decide which kinds of medical treatments are worth the costs? Bold proposals could have been offered for these and other important issues, but the President has not done so in his State of the Union Address.

-- Christopher J. Ruhm, Jefferson-Pilot Excellence Professor of Economics, Bryan School of Business, UNCG

IMMIGRATION: There are two issues: 1) border security and 2) immigration reform. I have toured the U.S.-Mexico border with the U.S. Border Patrol on many occasions, from the Gulf to the Pacific. It is my belief that a fence, regardless of make or features, will not stem the tide of people illegally crossing into the U.S. People currently penetrate fenced and patrolled borders with impunity, day and night. They go under, over and through all our barriers. Do we need to retrofit the physical barriers? Yes. Is it the solution to stopping the surge of people? No! Will virtual fences work? No! As long as people believe there is opportunity in the U.S. they will come. And as long as the benefits of illegal immigration outweigh the punishment people will continue to come.

"If it ain't broke don't fix it!" Implement the current laws. There are many who feel that current laws offer adequate protections if they are followed. Some also feel that to change the rules to accommodate some penalizes those who abided by the law. Yet another guest worker program rewards illegal immigration.

People on both sides of the aisle don't seem to have the political will to do the correct thing. ...

The rapid growth in our prison population is evidence that we [also] take many working-age Americans out of the working pool. We tolerate this, preferring to spend on average $30,000/year to incarcerate and only $8,500/year to educate(estimates for North Carolina). This labor-pool gap has multiple dimensions. Immigrants, especially illegals, benefit from the disconfiguration of the American labor force. They will work for [less than] minimum wage. If, however, they begin to challenge working conditions and expect more from the American dream, they are replaced, e.g., southeast Asians are now being imported as farm workers in the Pacific states to replace Hispanics.

-- Dr. James Mayes, assistant professor of political science and criminal justice and director of the Criminal Justice Program, N.C. A&T.

One last thing: I'm not gonna name any N.C. congresswomen by name, but kissing a president on the mouth on live TV, even after the children are in bed, is just ... well, not the kind of thing that even the best reporter school in the world can prepare you for, and I really, really hope that's not what I actually saw. Just sayin'.

UPDATE: No, unfortunately, we now have independent confirmation that I saw it. Ew. I'm trying to decide whether the fact that the gentlewoman from Minnesota's mad preznit-clutching skillz apparently trump the preznit-clutching kung fu of the gentlewoman from North Carolina is cause for concern.

UPDATE: I apologize for the font and leading (space-between-lines) weirdness. Even after going through the code, I can't find what's causing it. I'm now going to start beating my computer with a large coffee mug to see if that h

I covered a League of Women Voters luncheon yesterday at Holy Trinity Episcopal at which the now-disbanded Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report on the Nov. 3, 1979, killings in Greensboro was discussed.

In that incident, Klansmen and Nazis were led by an undercover police informant to the spot at which union organizers, including communists, were preparing a "Death to the Klan!" march and rally. The Klansmen opened fire, killing five. The shooters were acquitted of all charges after long trials in state and federal courts. They and the city were found liable in a civil trial.

Flyers for the event titled it, "The Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Does It Matter?" But all three speakers and, so far as I could tell, the entire audience appeared to take that question as settled. As I've said before, I see that as a significant flaw in the T&R process and one I hope is addressed for the next Town Hall meeting on the report, being held in March at the main library.

One subject on which the group at large did have a little to say was what kind of apology the city of Greensboro owes the victims and the larger community hurt by the events of Nov. 3. Even if I knew the answer, and I'm not sure there is one correct answer, it's not the kind of thing I could say much about in my current professional role -- with one exception: When you're found civilly liable for wrongful death, and the consensus of folks examining your conduct is that it's not clear whether you were conspiring with a bunch of killers or just grossly inept, then a silent shrug is not, at least from a public-relations standpoint, a particularly good idea.

Yesterday's question about apologies ties into some issues we Americans have been struggling with for the entire history of this country -- in particular, how we see our government and what we tell ourselves about our government versus how it actually works.

We're quite fond of Abraham Lincoln's description of American government as being of the people, by the people and for the people. But that's a vulnerable frame, for reasons you've heard discussed many times.

And what we wrestle with goes beyond those well-known issues of basic rights, extending into issues of who does and who does not have the power to get things done at any level of government, irrespective of the number of citizens for or against it. It extends into questions of how much and what kind of government involvement in the economy is appropriate.

Complicating these questions is the fact that many of us tend to think of the government not as some faceless institution up the road or up the coast, but as "us," in a theoretical sense but also in the sense that my neighbor Joe's a state trooper and my co-worker Donna is married to a public-school teacher and my nephew Kevin is a Marine and so on.

In real life, this notion probably is most nearly true at the level of New England town meetings, but many of us like to think of it as true at all levels of government. The Gettysburg Address suggests that Lincoln did.

If that's the case, then, what does it say about government-as-us when a government entity refuses to apologize for judicially ascertained wrongdoing committed against some of its own people?

Does it mean that one part of "us" is wronging another part of "us"? If so, is that OK? If it's not OK, what should happen?

Or does it mean that government is not really "us" after all? If so, is that OK? If it's not OK, what should happen?

I'm skeptical that the report will ever be instrumental in helping Greensboro achieve true reconciliation over the events of Nov. 3, 1979. I'm not certain it won't, but I'm skeptical.

But maybe that was never in the cards. Maybe that report is destined to serve a different, if related, purpose.

What if the report were to help this community arrive at some consensus on the answers to some of the questions I just raised -- questions also raised by Nov. 3, 1979, but not defined strictly in terms of the personalities and organizations involved in the events of that day? That might be a good start.

Supporters of the truth-and-reconciliation process have said that the issues raised by that day have a larger meaning and tie into other related issues, some of more recent vintage. If so, then maybe the way forward toward any reconciliation we might ever achieve over Nov. 3 is hashing out those issues, rather than the issues tied so specifically to Nov. 3.

I don't know that. I don't necessarily even think that. But the possibility occurred to me, and I throw it out for whatever comments you might have.

Former Gov. Jim Martin, who represented North Carolina's 9th Congressional District from 1973 to 1985, had some things to say in today's article on the late President Ford that I didn't have room to lay out in the depth they really deserved.

Martin (full disclosure: a longtime friend of my late father's) pointed out that Ford faced some serious handicaps in trying to win a presidential term of his own after succeeding Richard Nixon in the summer of '74.

For one thing, one of the factors that had made him a confirmable successor to Spiro Agnew -- the fact that he had never run a national or even a Senate campaign -- also meant that he had no real following outside his own congressional district and the House Republican leadership. He was going to have to build one from scratch during his campaign after an abbreviated term tainted by the corruption of his predecessor.

For another, he assumed the presidency as a Republican when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and had for about a generation.
That fact alone meant that the number of confirmable candidates from whom he could pick someone to nominate for vice president was almost nil. He picked Nelson Rockefeller, a moderate and therefore someone at least some Democrats could be persuaded to vote to confirm. But in so doing, he angered some of his own party's conservatives, thus inadvertently laying the seeds for former California Gov. Ronald Reagan's insurgency during the 1976 primary season.

That insurgency failed as Ford finally clinched the nomination, but he was so weakened by the effort (as Jimmy Carter would be, four years later, by Edward Kennedy's insurgency) that he entered the fall campaign behind.

And, of course, there was the pardon of Nixon. Of all of these factors, it was the only one that was, so far as we know, completely within Ford's control.

And yet despite all these obstacles, in a horrendous year for Republicans, Ford and his campaign managers almost closed the gap between him and Jimmmy Carter by Election Day -- the 297-to-241 Electoral College margin was smaller than many had expected.

It's interesting to speculate on what would have happened had Ford won a full term. Would Ronald Reagan still have won in 1980? Or would the country have decided that 12 years of Republicans in the White House was enough?

Hard to say.

Today I'm gathering some local and state reaction to the news of the death of former President Gerald Ford. If you have any recollections to share -- particularly if you attended Ford's visits to Greensboro in October 1974 or March 1976 -- please call me at 373-7088 or e-mail me. Thanks!

After the first town-hall meeting to discuss the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report, eight days ago, I had a number of thoughts, but probably the one most on my mind since then has been this:

The people who were in that room needed to hear from people who weren't in that room -- that is, people who are skeptical of, or even hostile toward, the T&R process.

And vice versa.

And so I've wondered, to myself, to Steve Sumerford of the co-sponsoring Greensboro Public Library and to some e-mail correspondents I've heard from: Is there anything that can be done to ensure that both supporters and skeptics are represented among speakers at the next such town-hall meeting (March 11)?

I'm a reporter, not an organizer, so it's not my place to line up such people. At the same time, having lived here coming up on 20 years, I have roots and a stake in this community. If any good -- any reconciliation -- can come out of this process, I'd like for it to. But I don't see that happening without a broader range of voices at the table.

At this evening's Town Hall meeting to discuss the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report on the Nov. 3, 1979, Klan-Nazi killings, several students from UNCG who have studied their report shared their responses to it in the form of poetry. One of the students, Alicia Sowisdral, gave me a copy of the text to post here. It is in sections, with each section having been written and recited by different students (identified at the end of each section); Sowisdral edited the overall work.

Lyrical Reflections of November 3rd, 1979
Compiled and Edited By Alicia Sowisdral

Life at the mill ain’t been no thrill
America’s part of the KKK and they’re ready to kill
we’re overworked and underpaid.
Lord knows there are some changes to be made
The bastards upstairs wont give us a break
They don’t realize our lives are at stake
This isn’t just about race it’s more about class
even these white workers are being treated like trash
We try to speak out and are seen as a threat
but if they think I’m gonna shut up
that’s something they can forget
they don’t want us meeting or putting up signs
but for them to rally against us is just fine
I don’t even know when things all fell apart
at what point did the inequality start
I’ll tell you what, if we’re going to be saved
lord knows there are some changes to be made
- By Shanell Shaw and Savon Williams

In 1863
Good ol’ Abe declared to givus us free
Which puts the years from now
To one hundred and forty-three
Since slavery ended, so it’s said…
So why is it that now
I can’t get ahead?
Don’t get it twisted
It wasn’t no moral change of heart
This was a time of war
And a political decision to mend
The schism
And to get applause from those abroad
The federacy
wanted slavery
and Reconstruction
Still enslaving the
Freedmen wanting
To be men
Wanting to vote and treated
As equal, then
Now
We back there again
Treated as a second class
Citizens
It’s ’79 tryna stay alive
Wit these wages
We sleeping in cages
Give me my damn money
You see we hungry!
LOOK at these racial disparities
Education, wages, housing, health care, insanity
Twice as many of us living below poverty
Why can’t we be what we wanna be?
When all we want to be is free…
- By Jeanna Covington

FREE to be a young black man
who can take a stand
without you assuming there’s a gun in my hand
they tell me speech is free?
well not for me
my words are interpreted by what you see
a criminal
a liar
a troublemaker
a threat
and I ain’t even said nothing yet
but I’m the one you love to hate
not an equal citizen but an enemy of the state
so I flip a table or throw a chair
what I gotta do for you to see me here?
embody the stereotype of anger and rage
just to play a part on Americas stage
where the stories that are told
depend on the power you hold
But changes gonna come
I’ll show you I am someone
Tired of being overlooked
It’s time we write our own history book
not just about black and white
this is a story of civil rights
the Truth is we deserve to be heard
even if you can’t understand a single word
- By Micheal Craig

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about race
and I’ve spent a lot of time lookin’ at my face
tryin’ to get past my skin
to find what’s within
and you think I don’t see
how your looking at me
thinking cause I’m white
I ain’t got no right
to speak to another
about these stupid assumptions we assign by color
I don’t need you to like me
I don’t need you to care
but I need for myself to make you aware
even if its just for this moment right now
your gonna listen while I lay it down
Death to Klan is the headline that ran
in every paper around town
they spoke of burning the klan to the ground
like the fiery crosses left on many a lawn
but theirs was a metaphor and institutional claim
not a reality where thousands were hanged
the klan and the nazis perpetuate hate
that’s a matter of fact not up for debate
their words are vicious their actions the same
torture and killing is how they play the game
see, meritocracy is a myth if you want to buy in
to this commodity culture were living in
don’t nobody start with the same fair chances
life is all about circumstances
most of are controlled by another
especially if you a person of color
-By Alicia Sowisdral

but there were a few
who knew what they had to do
lead, organize and educate the masses
time to transcend all social classes
so they took the road to china grove
with no thought of the consequences their future would hold
pointing the finger at working conditions
forcing people to see the problems in the system
In the fight for equality
Five were gunned down
You didn’t want to remember
So you rearranged the ground
And you say they weren’t victims
for choosing to be there
But I doubt they chose
which bullet to wear
Sandi, Cesar, Mike, Bill and Jim
they all believed this was fight we could win
But the Truth was concealed about the events of that day
A group of men and women acting in ignorant ways
And still many deny the reason why
I guess it’s easier to swallow a lie
The killers were tried but slapped on the hand
where was the justice promised from our great land?
Instead the story was twisted and called a shootout
That day the light in Greensboro’s hall of justice went out.
-By Jami Daniels

But here is hope if you can see
Americas just a baby democracy
there’s still much to be learned in the land of the free
and to be brave we must not fear reality
So what now?
We’re past the point of assigning blame
but no longer will we carry this shame
we want recognition and justice at last
the only way to evolve is to learn from the past
we cant turn back time we cannot undo
but we must continue to seek out the truth
we are asking the city to say it out loud
we’re SORRY for the innocent blood on the ground
we’re SORRY the police didn’t serve and protect
we’re SORRY they weren’t present that day
to protect the people and keep the klan away
let this tragedy birth a new life
one of fairness and equality instead of suffering and strife
let all city workers be paid a living wage
and encourage those filled with hatred to overcome their rage
let’s instill in the youth the integrity to do for yourself
without exploiting somebody else
so future generations can lay a new foundation
and continue to build a more just nation
-By Alicia Sowisdral

On Sunday afternoon, the first of four Town Hall meetings to discuss the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's May report on the 1979 Klan-Nazi killings will be held at Bennett College. I'll have an article in Sunday's paper telling you more about it. Meanwhile, here are links to some posts from earlier in the year that stemmed from my covering the release of the report and subsequent events:

• From the Notebook: Truth Convention Tidbits
• More from the truth-commission convention

UPDATE: We've posted online the Oct. 24 letter from the nonprofit's outside accountant and the subsequent letter from the nonprofit's treasurer. Links can be found at the online version of the article, here.

A few tidbits I didn't have room to include in the print edition:

• When the state audits a grant recipient, auditors typically meet with the grant recipient afterward to go over questions and concerns before writing up the report. For whatever reason, that didn't happen in this case, and no one I've talked to so far can tell me why. Amelia Parker said the nonprofit sought a face-to-face meeting with auditors after it received a copy of Auditor Les Merritt's Sept. 29 letter to the Department of Cultural Resources, which originated the grant, but had been unable to get one scheduled before Merritt's letter was posted on the Web on Tuesday.
• This fact is particularly important in light of the fact that museum officials insist they have documentation for all expenses covered by the grant money. Because I have been denied access to the state's work papers (at least for now), I can't independently verify or disprove the museum's claim -- I'd have to know what the expenses the state thinks were undocumented were before I'd be able to determine whether the museum actually has documentation.
• I'm sure anyone looking at the state's letter online was particularly intrigued by the notion of "big-screen TVs." But, as Parker said, we're not talking about something you could go pick up at Best Buy. We're talking about plasma screens for interactive audio/video displays -- specialized equipment. It's being stored in Sit-In Movement Inc.'s current administrative offices, up Elm Street from the museum site. And, yes, the storage is climate-controlled.
• One other big-ticket item that was purchased in '04 when February 2005 was still the planned opening date was a quantity of structural steel for the building renovations. Richard "Skip" Moore, president of the Weaver Foundation, speculates that even with the cost of storing the steel offsite since its purchase, steel is so much more expensive now than it was in '04 that the museum might still be better off financially in this regard. Not having precise figures available, I don't know whether that's true, but it's a possibility I hadn't thought of.

I'm writing a story for the weekend that looks forward in light of Tuesday's defeat of bonds for the museum renovation. Any new information I gather about this audit in the course of writing that story, I'll try to include or else blog here. After that, I'm not sure whose coverage responsibility the museum will be.

That'd be me. A few quick things on my radar (and by all means feel free to let me know what I'm missing):

• Because of my unfortunate indisposition (and trust me, you don't want to know), I missed the Friday news conference regarding upcoming public discussions of the Truth & Reconciliation report (my colleague Tom Steadman's story is here).
  
• I'm trying to get details nailed down regarding the legal clinic for military veterans that N.C. Central University has talked about opening at its law school. As envisioned, NCCU and UNC-Chapel Hill laws students, supervised by lawyers, would work with veterans on their claims for government benefits at no charge to the vets. I don't have confirmation yet on specific details and began playing phone tag with NCCU's legal-clinic director before my illness.


• I'm beginning a look at vets' efforts to get help for post-traumatic stress disorder. I'm just dipping my toes in, but I've been fascinated by the case of an area man who survived a Vietnam War incident, long classified, that was sort of the Viet Cong "Guns of Navarone."


• Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.Net is up and running. I'll need to take more of a look at it before I'll have anything useful to say, if, indeed, I ever do. Meanwhile, it has initiatives related to tomorrow's elections here and here that you can take part in (if you hurry).


• Gannett, the country's largest newspaper chain, will be imposing citizen journalism on its larger papers from the top down. I need to find out a lot more about this. I will admit to a fair bit of up-front skepticism only because the approach seems to mirror a pattern I've seen in Gannett's news-coverage initiatives: push direction down hard from the top in a way that seems to read the words but totally miss the music, so to speak. In the meantime it's entirely possible that an erstwhile colleague who has spent quite a bit of time in the belly of that particular beast will, I hope, offer some specific details and some quality perspective on the effort.


• Relatedly, here's one example in which newspaper, community and the nature of a specific story came together to produce the kind of citizen journalism that so far we've only been able to dream about:
  

  
  Consider what the nation's largest newspaper publisher, Gannett Co., is doing at The News Press, its paper in Ft. Myers, Fla.

  Earlier this year, News Press editors and reporters began hearing that the sewer district in nearby Cape Coral was charging residents as much as $28,000 a year to pay for new residential lines. In an experiment, it asked its readers online and in print to "Help Us Investigate!"

  The response was overwhelming, said Cindy McCurry-Ross, the paper's senior managing editor. Readers sent in tips, and a key audit document. The result was a journalistic win--a drop in sewer assessments--as well as a potential business enhancement: Traffic on the Web site soared, giving ad salespeople ammunition to take to clients.

  "It was a frenzy,' McCurry-Ross said.

• I'll be covering Tuesday night's City Council meeting so that Margaret can cover the city bond referenda. I haven't seen the agenda yet -- I'm running over in a bit to pick up a copy because the online link isn't working -- but I understand it's heavy on rezoning hearings.

A couple of random, assorted tidbits on the Foley case, including leftovers from my conversations with three of the four members of the Piedmont Triad's Congressional delegation about the Mark Foley scandal (today's story here):

During my telephone conversation with him Thursday, Rep. Howard Coble, the 6th District Republican, called on the National Republican Congressional Committee to return $100,000 it received earlier this summer from former Rep. Foley's political-action committee. The NRCC works to elect Republican candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives. Because Republican control of the House is in jeopardy for the first time since that party took control of the chamber after the 1994 elections, the NRCC understandably wants to raise as much money as possible to help Republican candidates in close races. Foley, prior to news of his scandalous Internet communications, was considered a safe bet for re-election and still has roughly $2.8 million in his PAC.

The NRCC's problem, however, is that news reports indicate that the NRCC's chairman, Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, had been told months ago about Foley's potentially problematic behavior. He accepted the money anyway -- and also is reported to have been instrumental in talking Foley, who had been thinking about retiring, into running for re-election this year.

No quid pro quo has been proved, Coble said, but "appearance-wise, it does not look good."

Rep. Virginia Foxx, the area's other Republican House member, has no problem with Reynolds' behavior. And she thinks that if at least two newspapers -- the Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times -- were onto the story but had chosen not to publish anything at the time the NRCC got Foley's money, she doesn't see why Reynolds should have done anything differently: "There were at least two newspaper outlets and they didn't think it was worth reporting. Then why fault Reynolds for doing what he did? If the news media had thought at the time that it was so inappropriate that something should have been done, then maybe they should have done something."

The St. Petersburg Times' executive editor, however, makes very clear the Times did, indeed, think the story was worth reporting, and the paper reported on it -- that is, reporters gathered what information they could for a story. Here's what happened next, he says:

I led deliberations with our top editors, and we concluded that we did not have enough substantiated information to reach beyond innuendo.

We were unsuccessful in getting members of Congress who were involved in the matter or those who administer the House page corps to acknowledge any problem with Foley's ambiguous e-mail or to suggest that they thought it was worth pursuing.

And we couldn't come up with a strong enough case to explain to a teenager's parents why, over their vehement pleas to drop the matter, we needed to make their son the subject of a story - and the incredible scrutiny that would surely follow.

It added up to this conclusion: To print what we had seemed to be a shortcut to taint a member of Congress without actually having the goods.

Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Miami Herald, said essentially the same thing to The Associated Press:

"Our decision at the time was ... that because the language was not sexually explicit and was subject to interpretation, from innocuous to 'sick,' as the page characterized it, to be cautious," said Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Herald. "Given the potentially devastating impact that a false suggestion of pedophilia could have on anyone, not to mention a congressman known to be gay, and lacking any corroborating information, we chose not to do a story."

With all due respect to Congresswoman Foxx, she appears to have misunderstood or misremembered the newspapers' positions.

My story noted that Foxx, as have many other Bush supporters, says she thinks the whole story is a Democratic plot -- the proverbial October surprise in a close, high-stakes national campaign.

Anything's possible, but a number of recent developments are making that scenario less plausible:

• ABC News' Brian Ross, the lead dog in the journalistic pack following this story, has said that to the extent he knew his sources' political affiliations, his sources were Republicans.
• Florida's two biggest newspapers apparently were onto the story almost a year ago. With a single scrap of corroboration, the story might well have broken then, a year before the election.
• Three more former pages have come forward with allegations about Foley, ABC News reported.

Foxx also called in today's story for the FBI to investigate "who had those e-mails and why they chose to release them on Friday," meaning Sept. 29. If it's someone who withheld the e-mails in order to protect Foley, that's one thing. But if it's someone who was a victim of Foley, or someone close to a victim, and that person had held onto the e-mails until last Friday out of fear of retribution, that's another question altogether: Calling for an FBI investigation of that subject now might well discourage others who have relevant information from coming forward.

It's a tricky question, inasmuch as right now we have no way of knowing for sure which category, if either, the source of the e-mails falls into.

UPDATE: It appears House Speaker Hastert has set up a toll-free telephone number and is asking that anyone who might have information on the case call him. Perhaps I'm worrying over nothing here, but doesn't this mean that he might hear from some of the same people the FBI and/or the Ethics Committee need to hear from, before those groups do? And if so, in the case of the FBI, is that even legal?

CBS News recently reported that the FBI had claimed that the copies it got from CREW were "heavily redacted." The network also reported that the FBI claimed that it contacted CREW again, seeking additional information, and that CREW refused to cooperate.

Just one problem, CREW says: The FBI lied to CBS.

On Monday, CREW sent the Justice Department's Inspector General copies of what it says it sent in July: full, unredacted copies of the e-mails. CREW also says that the only phone call it got from the FBI subsequent to July was one confirming the e-mails were from Foley. It says it never received any requests for additional information.

On Thursday, CREW wrote the IG, seeking an investigation into why the FBI had disseminated an apparently false story about CREW.

The Washington Post recently quoted an anonymous FBI official as saying that the FBI had decided earlier that the e-mails "did not rise to the level of criminal activity." Now, if they didn't have all the information they needed, how could they make that determination?

(By the way, CREW's Web site has been swamped today; I just got a page saying that the site was down because its bandwidth limit had been exceeded.)

As it happens, a new poll conducted after the Foley news broke has come out the district of Rep. Tom Reynolds, the NRCC chair, and it shows him trailing his Democratic challenger for the first time in the campaign, 50% to 45% with 5% undecided and a margin of error of 4%.

Now that Mark Foley has resigned his seat, the House Ethics Committee (whose formal name actually is the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct) has no jurisdiction or authority over him. Accordingly, it will not be looking into Foley's behavior, but into the behavior of people still in the House or on its staff who might have known in detail about Foley's behavior and not reported or acted on it.

I wish I'd had room to make that small but important point in today's article.

If, as columnist Robert Novak claims, Rep. Tom Reynolds talked Mark Foley into running for re-election this year despite knowing about possible problems with Foley's behavior, then why did Reynolds do so?

The most obvious answer is that this year, for a change, every seat counts if the GOP wishes to maintain control of the House, and Foley's seat was about as safe as they come: His smallest majority, which came in his first election in 1994, was 58%. Bush carried the district in 2000 and 2004, so there's no particular reason to think some other Republican would have done much worse if Foley had retired.

Rep. Brad Miller wonders whether the real issue wasn't Foley's seat so much as Foley's money. With $2.8 million in the bank and not much need to spend it on himself, Foley could afford to spread the wealth around to candidates in closer races. Doing so would not only help the GOP in close races, it also would mean that other House Republicans would owe Foley for the favor -- a debt that could conceivably be called in, sometime in the future, for support of a bill, support for a leadership position or some other benefit.

"I don't think I'll tell the Republicans what they should do with the NRCC," Miller said in an interview Thursday. "But Foley was a strong fund raiser, and that is valued by party committees in Washington sometimes more than knowledge of issues or ability to compromise or many of the other qualities I thought made the legislature work and would make Congress work, which it doesn't. Instead, the ability to raise money for your party is the most highly valued quality. That's all part and parcel of Congress being far too partisan and far more worried about election sthan getting things done. If it's true they were protecting him, it was to protect that seat, one, and second, to keep him around as a fund-raiser."

AND, IN THE "YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" DEPARTMENT: House Republicans have subpoeaned three Democrats, none of whom have been reported to have any involvement in the Mark Foley scandal, to appear before the House Ethics Committee. They're Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chair of the NRCC's Democratic counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Your humble correspondent has been tasked with seeking comments from the Triad's congressional delegation today regarding the case of former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. I've talked with Howard Coble, gotten a statement from Mel Watt, am expecting a callback soon from Brad Miller and am hoping for a callback from Virginia Foxx.

Possibly related developments:

• House Speaker Dennis Hastert is supposed to be holding a news conference in Illinois as I type. I don't know yet whether he actually is doing so.


• The House Ethics Committee is supposedly holding a news conference at 1:30 p.m. ET.

A number of commenters locally and nationally on various blogs have compared this case in various ways to those of Reps. Gerry Studds and Dan Crane in the early 1980s. TPMMuckraker.com has an instructive look at how the House addressed those cases: with an "independent" and "massive" investigation.

This book review appears in the Ideas section of the print edition of today's N&R.

KINGDOM COMING: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in America. By Michelle Goldberg. Norton. 210 pages. $23.95

The American Taliban is real. It is powerful. And it is probably going to make this country worse before things get better.

That’s the message of Salon.com writer Michelle Goldberg’s important book about “Christian nationalism,” or Christian Reconstructionism — a movement that believes the Constitution and laws of the United States should be replaced with Old Testament law. What does that mean? At least one adherent says in the book that a strict reading of the Second Commandment’s ban on graven images might well mean the end of cinema.

I wish I could tell you Goldberg’s wrong. But I’ve been following the movement since first learning about it while covering religion more than a decade ago, and I know independently that she’s not.

And I wish I could say she’s exaggerating; as she notes, the subject is “hard to discuss without sounding shrill and hyperbolic.” But if anything, she downplays the disturbing ramifications of her own reporting: The movement, to paraphrase the late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, intends to use the political system to write an American suicide pact.

Christian nationalism resembles past U.S. revivals in emphasizing the literal truth of the Bible. But as Goldberg writes, it extrapolates from that truth a practical political program, and it has hitched that program to the Republican Party, whose upper levels now are replete with movement adherents in and out of government.

In contrast to the Enlightenment, the movement claims “supernatural sanction” for its earthly goals, conflating Scripture and politics. And anyone who doesn’t agree can expect to become, at best, a second-class citizen.

The movement’s steps toward realizing its goals have included:

• Demonizing homosexuality. Goldberg claims that because public racism has become unacceptable, gay men and lesbians have become “the other” against whom Reconstructionists must unite.


• Emphasizing creationism over evolution, to discredit not just evolution but “the very idea that truth can be ascertained without reference to the divine.” That way, even the looniest ideas can be given a patina of respectability if justified in religious terms.


• Seeking to both weaken and delegitimize the judiciary, in some cases by going so far as to call for the assassination of Supreme Court justices with whose rulings they disagree. (U.S. Sen. Jon Cornyn, R-Texas, said at a gathering of Reconstructionists in 2005 that he could understand how Christians could be so angry with courts that they might want to kill a judge.)


• Seeking to ban not only abortion, but also most forms of birth control, ostensibly because they “cause abortion” (they don’t) but actually because Reconstructionists approve of sex, even within marriage, only for procreation.


• Using tax dollars, in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, to fund “social services” from faith groups that undergo no cost-benefit analysis or oversight.

Religious though it claims to be, Christian nationalism, Goldberg writes, has lied about its actions and intentions and has used illogic or false historical claims to try to defend them. While he was president of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed bragged about his movement’s stealth tactics and dishonesty, saying that political opponents would be “in a body bag” before they knew what happened.

The movement even lies about Scripture. One adherent is quoted as saying that Sodom and Gomorrah “were boiled in oil because they were gay.” No, many authorities think that Scripture says the cities were destroyed because their denizens tried to gang-rape angels disguised as human travelers.

And adherents just don’t get that the United States has the world’s most lively and vibrant religious marketplace precisely because there is no state religion here.

Identifying the illogic does no good, Goldberg points out: If any movement belief is objectively discredited, those doing so are dismissed as “biased,” and the paranoia and self-righteousness of the group only grows.

Add to the lying and the illogic a staggering amount of hypocrisy. Just a couple of examples:

• The movement now has adherents in government who are providing its faith-based social programs with billions in tax money, yet many Reconstructionists (and many other conservative Christians) continue to claim that they are being “persecuted.”


• Goldberg shows that the movement, apparently for purely mercenary reasons, has aligned itself with the Rev. Sun-Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church and a convicted felon who has openly called for “theocracy to rule the world” and claims, in direct contradiction to orthodox Christianity, that Jesus “failed” because he never attained worldly power.

Goldberg says the movement must be opposed because it would destroy what is greatest about America. She’s right.

And given the many benefits of the Enlightenment to humanity, any movement that opposes it must be made to meet the highest possible burden of proof of utility and benefit.

But, perhaps because Goldberg describes herself as a secular Jew, she critiques the movement only from a secular, political viewpoint. As an observant, if flawed, Christian, I’m happy to critique it in Christian terms as well:

• Leading Reconstructionist figure R.J. Rushdoony called democracy “the great love of the failures and cowards of life” — precisely the people with whom Jesus spent most of his time.


• Conflating scripture with government is pure political idolatry, a massive violation of the Second Commandment.


• The movement perverts the good news of the Gospels into such notions as preventing girls from being vaccinated against the virus that can cause uterine cancer because it might lead them to think it’s OK to have sex. Its policy proposals would increase human suffering just to make movement adherents feel righteous. Jesus had something to say about that, too, and it wasn’t, “You go!”


• Then there’s all that bearing false witness.

The Christian nationalist movement isn’t just a threat to the United States. It’s also a complete betrayal of almost everything Jesus Christ ever stood for.

But both the Christian nationalists and I know what the solution is. They need to get on their knees. They need to confess. They need to repent. They need to beg Almighty God for forgiveness for their sins and blasphemies. And they need to do it today.

And if the rest of us value our freedoms, we need to be very, very careful whom we vote for.

Staff writer Lex Alexander won the 1997 Wilbur Award for outstanding coverage of religion in American daily newspapers. Contact him at 373-7088 or lalexander@news-record.com.

I didn't know Edie Jones well. But in my few dealings with her, back in the early 1990s, she impressed me as a woman unafraid to say what she thought and a woman who thought enough of Greensboro to want to make sure that everyone could enjoy its riches. We could use more people with both those traits.

Edie died Monday. She was 74. My condolences to her family and friends.

Veterans I've talked to probably complain more about delay in getting action on their benefits claims than any other problem -- even the problem of not getting benefits they think they're entitled to. So I decided to take a closer look at the process of handling a claim and what causes a delay.

Decisions on claims for pension and benefits typically take place at the regional-office level; the office for this region is in Winston-Salem. So I tried to call the director of that office to see about coming over there for a day or so, to watch how the work is done, ask questions of the people who work there about where they think any bottlenecks lie, and so forth.

That was my first bottleneck.

There's an 800 number listed for that office, but the voicemail menu isn't much help if you're not, say, a veteran seeking help with a claim. (The department's Web site was no help, either.) So that's what I pretended to be, at least while navigating the voicemail system, until I got hold of a live human being. That person, very polite and helpful, couldn't connect me directly to the regional director or anyone who handles press inquiries, but he offered to relay a message.

Someone from the office got back to me fairly soon afterward, but she ended up referring my inquiry to a press person at departmental headquarters in Washington. He, in turn, asked that I e-mail questions to him. I did that Friday afternoon, asking that he at least acknowledge getting the questions promptly even though I knew it might take a while to answer them all. I have received no acknowledgment, so I re-sent them this morning.

I'm going to list them below. If you can think of any I've missed, or have any other comments, please hit the comment link or e-mail me.

1. How many claims for benefits filed for compensation and pension are currently awaiting adjudication by rating boards and officials at the Department of Veterans' Affairs' Winston-Salem, N.C., regional office?

2. Once a Form 21-526 is filed with that office, what is the average time period until the board issues a final rating determination on the initial claim?

3. How many rating-board employees does the Winston-Salem regional office currently have authorized to handle initial claims for adjudication being filed at that office? How many of the authorized positions, if any, are currently vacant?

4. What measures have been taken at the VA central office to help the Winston-Salem regional office address issues of heavy caseload and inadequate staffing?

5. What measures have been taken by the Winston-Salem office itself during FY06 to deal with the heavy case load and inadequate staffing complaints made at the regional-office level?

6. How many employees have been hired by the Winston-Salem office in FY06?

7. What is the average age of these new employees?

8. What is the average educational level of these new employees? How many of them have college degrees (bachelor's degree or higher)?

9. How many of these new employees have served in the active-duty or reserve military?

10. If any new employees were hired to serve on ratings boards and had military backgrounds, how many had medico-legal backgrounds or medical backgrounds (e.g., nursing, physician's assistant, physical therapy, etc.), from their military service or otherwise?

11. On average, how much time are new hires given to learn the VA compensation and pension rating system before they begin handling claims?

12. What is the average salary for new employees hired to assist in adjudicating initial claims for compensation and pension filed at the Winston-Salem office?

13. How many physicians does the Winston-Salem regional office have on its staff to render medical opinions regarding VA medical claims at the regional office level? What is the average age of these physicians?

14. What are the criteria of the Winston-Salem regional office for hiring "independent medical opinions" to support its reasons and basis for rendering a rating decision?

15. In what specialties do the office's staff physicians practice?

16. Are all those physicians with specialties certified in those specialties by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS)?

17. Please describe the work process followed by rating-board employees in the Winston-Salem office in processing a typical claim.

18. In the Winston-Salem regional office, what procedures are followed to comply with the "affirmative VA duty to assist the veteran in developing his claim," under the Veterans Assistance Act of 2000 as well as under court case law? What measures are taken to obtain independent medical opinions, service medical records, buddy statements and other documentation in support of a claim? And what measures are taken to advise the veteran of what he needs to do to make his claim successful?

19. If the regional office is going to deny a claim, does the VA affirmatively inform the veteran of what evidence or procedures would be necessary to strengthen his claim to be granted the benefits sought under the VA's affirmative duty to assist the veteran in developing his claim?

20. What is the purpose of a "tiger team"? What effect has the VA's creation and assigning of tiger teams had on case load and average adjudication time of claims, in the Winston-Salem regional office and nationally? Has it cut down on backlog?

21. How is an employee selected to be on a tiger team?

22. Describe the process by which ratings-board employees are professionally evaluated. In particular, is there a quota on the number of cases in which each ratings-board employee must produce decisions regarding veterans claims on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? Are the employees personally rated or graded based on the number of cases that they produce in a given time period?

23. What is the time limit, if any, by which a ratings-board employee in the Winston-Salem regional office must get an initial claim for adjudication to the point of a final rating decision?

24. What is the case load assigned to each employee who is to review initial claims for adjudication at the Winston-Salem office?

25. Are there quotas and/or incentives for production in terms of how many cases are decided by a specific individual in terms of a final rating determination on an initial claim filed by a veteran?

26. What is the percentage of full grants of benefits to veterans who have filed claims with the Winston-Salem office for compensation and pension through a VA Form 21-526?

27. In the Winston-Salem office, what is the average number and percentage of initial rating decisions being appealed through reconsideration, consideration by a decision-review officer or the filing of a reopened claim?

28. In the Winston-Salem regional office, on average, how long must a veteran wait to get a complete copy of his claims folder, upon request by the veteran for such a copy?

29. How many such copying requests are currently pending in the Winston-Salem regional office?

30. What is the average amount of time from when a veteran first files his initial application for compensation and pension with the Winston-Salem regional office to the time he must file any appeal to the Board of Veterans Appeals? This includes any time necessary to adjudicate the notice of disagreement, the statement of the case and any decision-review officer decision.

31. What measures has the Winston-Salem regional office taken to address the complaints of many veterans, particularly elderly veterans worried about dying before they can receive benefits, that claims are languishing in that office?

32. Describe the duties of a decision-review officer. What steps, if any, do decision-review officers in the Winston-Salem regional office typically take under the affirmative VA duty to assist the veteran in developing his claim?

33. If a claim is initially denied or granted at a lower disability rating than sought by the veteran, is the veteran, under the VA's duty to assist the veteran in developing his claim, given an opportunity to rebut medical statements or other evidence relied upon by the Winston-Salem office in denying the claim?

34. What percentage of claims initially denied or granted at a lower disability rating than initially sought at the Winston-Salem office are referred to a decision-review officer?

35. Among cases referred to a decision-review officer at the Winston-Salem office, what percentage are approved and what percentage are denied?

36. After a rating decision has been adjudicated and a claimant files a claim for reconsideration, what percentage are granted reconsideration by the Winston-Salem regional office's VA ratings board ?

37. Of those granted reconsideration, what percentage are granted relief?

38. After the denial of a claim for compensation and pension and the veteran files a notice of disagreement, how long, on average, does it take the Winston-Salem regional office to issue a statement of the case?

39. What is the average time from when the veteran files his initial claim for compensation and pension with the Winston-Salem regional office, through the time the statement of the case is issued and the appeal is filed to the Board of Veterans Appeals?

40. What is the average total time from when a veteran files his initial claim for benefits (with the Winston-Salem office specifically, or, if that figure is not available, with all regional office in the U.S.) to the time the Board of Veterans Appeals issues its final decision?

41. What is the average amount of time from when a veteran files VA Form 9, Appeal to Board of Veterans Appeals, appealing an adverse VA rating decision, that the VA renders a final decision then ripe for judicial review at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims?

42. How many claims for compensation and pension are currently pending before the Board of Veterans Appeals? On average, how long have those cases been pending before the board?

43. How many attorneys are on staff at the Board of Veterans Appeals?

44. What is the average case load of a staff attorney at the Board of Veterans Appeals?

45. How is the work of staff attorneys handling appeals at the Board of Veterans Appeals evaluated? In particular, is there any quota system or case-processing requirement over any particular time period (per day, per week, etc.)?

46. What steps, if any, do staff attorneys at the Board of Veterans Appeals typically take to fulfill their affirmative duty to assist a veteran in developing his claim?

47. What is the rationale behind the Appellate Litigation Staff Group's refusal to provide to veterans, their representatives or counsels, full and complete copies of their claims folders at the time of the filing of the notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims?

48. Please explain what factors contribute to the delay between the time the veteran files his notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the time he gets the first opportunity to review his claims folder (typically months later). In particular, after the Appellate Litigation Staff Group has completed its designation of record on appeal under Rule 10a of Rules of Practice and Procedure before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, please explain the rationale for sending a veteran's case folder back to the originating regional office for the sole purpose of photocopying before making the case folder available to the veteran so that he or his counsel can prepare a counterdesignation of record on appeal under Rule 10b.

49. What problems, if any, exist at the Appellate Litigation Staff Group level of the VA's Office of General Counsel which are resulting in the delay of the processing of appeals before the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims?

50. What problems, if any, exist within the Appellate Litigation Staff Group relating to inadequate staffing and heavy case load?

51. If such problems exist, have ways to fix the problems at that level by transferring personnel from the central Office of the General Counsel to the Appellate Litigation Staff Group been identified?

52. How many (if any) former Appellate Litigation Staff Group 027 employees, including attorneys, paralegals and support staff, are now working at either the Board of Veterans Appeals, within other staff groups in the Office of General Counsel or elsewhere in the the Department's central office?

53. If former employees of the Appellate Litigation Staff Group 027 are currently working in other positions within the Office of the General Counsel, the central office of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Board of Veterans Appeals or regional VA offices, please explain why these employees have not been transferred back to the Appellate Litigation Staff Group 027 to assist with the heavy case load and inadequate staffing, the reasons cited to the court in almost every single case in which a motion for an extension of time is filed by the Appellate Litigation Staff Group 027.

54. How many motions for extensions of time have been filed by the Department's Office of General Counsel in FY05, and in FY06, due to heavy case load and/or inadequate staffing?

55. How many motions for extensions of time, on average, are filed by each side in any case in which there is a notice of appeal filed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims? What percentage of those motions by each side are granted?

56. On average, how long does it take, after a notice of appeal has been filed with the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, for the case to be assigned to the attorney of record?

57. How many appeals are currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims? On average, how long have those appeals been pending? Upon how many appeals does that Court rule in a typical year?

(end)

UPDATE: The public-affairs specialist with whom I've been dealing just e-mailed to say he expects to have answers later today.

My article Sunday on lawyers' efforts to help veterans get government benefits apparently struck a chord: I had a couple of e-mails waiting this morning, including one from a vet in Kentucky, and have taken several phone calls as well.

I hope to have more news to report on this front within a day or two. In the meantime, while doing more research, I ran across this tangentially related blog post, which at least has the merit of being a fairly simple analysis of a very complex subject. I do not know whether this blogger knows what he's talking about, so I pass this on with that caveat.

JR blogs here about Jason Hardin's A-1 centerpiece Sunday about euthanasia at the Guilford County Animal Shelter. The story, and particularly the accompanying photo, upset some readers.

'Twas ever thus. On April 1, 1990, I had a story published in the N&R that began like this:

The aging Boston terrier quivers as Gay Williams, dressed in a dark blue lab coat and hands swathed in latex, lifts him onto the tailgate of the Chevy pickup.

"You poor little pitiful thing," Williams says, trying to soothe the animal as she runs one hand over his knobby spine and ribs.

Holly Patton, also in a lab coat, picks up a syringe with one gloved hand, a bottle of sodium pentobarbital with the other, and draws the deadly drug into the syringe.

Amid a cacophony of dozens of other dogs barking in kennels nearby at the Guilford County Animal Shelter, Patton lifts the dog's right front paw and swabs its leg, dripping disinfectant all over the tailgate.

As Patton sticks the needle into the animal's leg, dark, venous blood oozes into the syringe, moving in the pale blue sodium pentobarbital like thick oil in water. She must hit a vein, or the drug will be injected uselessly into fat or muscle.

Patton's right thumb squeezes the plunger home. Almost instantly, the animal wilts, eyes still open but now unseeing. Williams caresses the terrier's head, then slides it on its side to the right side of the truck bed. Like a stick protruding from a bag of leaves, one leg points awkwardly toward the cab.

Patton, Williams and their co-workers will repeat the procedure eight more times this morning. As the dogs are laid out, another worker, Jay Browning, moves among them, feeling their rib cages for heartbeats and finding none.

When they're done, the pickup truck will take the animals to be buried in the landfill.

The last dog to die, a small, mixed-breed sheep dog, struggles so much that he must be given a nonlethal sedative injection just to calm him long enough to receive the injection that will kill him.

Patton gives him the shot, then watches as the dog convulses five times, a sixth. She lays her left hand on the animal's rib cage. Though the animal is still, she keeps her hand on it another full minute and more before turning away.

"That's it for now - until we open to the public and they start bringing more in," Patton says.

The photo isn't in our electronic archives, but if memory serves, it was of one of the dogs being injected in the back of the pickup, with previously injected dogs, now dead, visible in the background. That memory is bolstered by descriptions in some of the letters to the editor we published five days later:

There are no adjectives strong enough to express the shock I felt at seeing the picture of a dog receiving a lethal injection of sodium pentobarbital on the front page of the News & Record April 1. To say it was in poor taste would be an incredible understatement. ... I do not expect to open up my Sunday newspaper and be forced to w