James Stewart, writing in the New York Times, has an interesting piece detailing how Chrysler executives and dealers were blindsided by accusations that the now-infamous Clint Eastwood ad was politically motivated.

Before the Super Bowl, the ad had been previewed by Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne for some 700 Chrysler dealers at their annual meeting in Las Vegas. The lights went down, the two-minute ad played on large screens in the conference hall, and after it ended, Marchionne told the crowd, ““Nothing more needs to be said.”

I’ll let Mr. Stewart pick up the story there:

“Overcome by emotion, he bowed his head and turned his back to the audience, according to those present, and there was a moment of stunned silence. It was the first time anyone had seen the video outside a closely guarded circle. Then the dealers rose and started applauding, an ovation that went on for several minutes.

Mr. Marchionne “cried, and then he left the room,” recalled David Kelleher, president of the Chrysler National Dealer Council and of David Dodge Chrysler Jeep in Glen Mills, Pa. “We were all crying, crying and applauding at the same time. We were blown away. We knew what he was talking about. We’d all been through hell and back. No one was more publicly flogged than we were. We were failing. And here we are. We’re making money.”

We all know what happened next. The ad was shown during the Super Bowl. Conservatives for some reason took offense at the celebration of a recovering America. Karl Rove went on Fox News to complain how offended he felt that Chrysler executives “feel they need to do something to repay their political patrons.”

Mr. Stewart again:

“But the $80 billion lent to the two companies came from the administrations of both President George W. Bush and President Obama. And as it happened, Mr. Bush, whom Mr. Rove served in the White House, was addressing the auto dealers in Las Vegas the same day that Mr. Rove took to the airwaves. “I’d do it again,” the former president said of his decision to bail out the auto industry. “I didn’t want there to be 21 percent unemployment.”

Chrysler executives were incensed by Mr. Rove’s remarks. “The former spokesperson was attacking not only a short video, but the essence of the bailout of Chrysler and G.M. while his former boss, the former president, was saying exactly the opposite,” a Chrysler spokesman, Gualberto Ranieri, pointed out to me.

Mr. Kelleher,Mr. Kelleher is a Republican, but said he wasn’t especially political and was dumbfounded by attacks on “Halftime in America.”

“My customers loved it,” Mr. Kelleher said. “I’ve heard from a chorus of people. They filled up my Facebook page. They thought it was monumental. The American people will see this ad for what it is and they’re going to rally behind an American icon that was scarred and down and now it’s risen again.”

Mr. Kelleher, the Chrysler dealer quoted above, said that he and his fellow dealers, many of them Republican like himself, were so angry about the criticism that they drafted a public statement released on behalf of the company’s 2,300 dealers.

The video, they wrote, “was designed to relate to those still suffering the effects of the recession, that they may be buoyed by our example and they may find the courage to endure through to similar success going forward.”

“We have no doubt that this ad had no political agenda of any kind but rather a statement of fact and hope for the future for all of us and America.”

But these days, you can’t make “a statement of fact and hope for the future for all of us and America” without being attacked for making a political statement.

– Jay Bookman

Of course, in the case of piano player Adam Weiner, those roots are in southern New Jersey, and for guitarist Dan Finnermore it’s the southern half of the United Kingdom — Birmingham, to be more exact. But hey, rock and roll is one of the American South’s great contributions to the world, right?

– Jay Bookman

I’ve been reading Justice Antonin Scalia’s decision in “Employment Division v. Smith,” a 1990 case in which the Supreme Court pretty much settled the question of whether the federal government can require or outlaw actions that might bump up against religious beliefs. The decision makes it clear that the Catholic bishops have no legal or constitutional basis for their complaint.

Scalia, himself a devout and very conservative Catholic, wrote in the majority decision:

“We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition.

Scalia traces Supreme Court rulings on the issue back to an 1879 decision that upheld federal laws against polygamy. A member of the Mormon Church had argued that because his faith required men to marry multiple wives, polygamy was protected under the First Amendment and that Mormons could claim a religious exemption from such a law.

The Supreme Court disagreed, concluding:

“… the only question which remains is whether those who make polygamy a part of their religion are excepted from the operation of the statute. If they are, then those who do not make polygamy a part of their religious belief may be found guilty and punished, while those who do, must be acquitted and go free. This would be introducing a new element into criminal law. … Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship; would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband; would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?

… To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and, in effect, to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.”

Now, polygamy, human sacrifice and the Hindu practice of “sati” are admittedly rather extreme and obvious cases. However, Scalia went on to note a string of other Supreme Court cases decided to the same effect.

The most relevent to the current controversy is a a 1982 case that closely parallels the current discussion over contraception. In United States v. Lee, the Supreme Court found that there was nothing unconstitutional in requiring an Amish employer to withhold and pay Social Security taxes for his workers even though “the Amish faith prohibited participation in governmental support programs.”

Here’s how they put it:

“When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes that are binding on others in that activity. Granting an exemption from social security taxes to an employer operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees.”

You would not need to change a single word of that paragraph to apply it to the contraceptive debate.

In his own opinion in the Smith case, Scalia wraps it up rather bluntly:

“Respondents urge us to hold, quite simply, that when otherwise prohibitable conduct is accompanied by religious convictions, not only the convictions but the conduct itself must be free from governmental regulation. We have never held that, and decline to do so now.”

– Jay Bookman

The vote was close — 110 in favor to 62 opposed, with 120 votes needed to approve it. However, supporters intend to bring the resolution up for another vote once they have twisted enough arms to get the required two-thirds majority.

Supposedly, the amendment is needed to repair damage to the state’s charter-school system inflicted by a state Supreme Court decision last year. The court ruled that state officials do not have authority to overrule locally elected school boards and force those boards to finance state-created charter schools.

Just as a matter of principle, the resolution ought to be a hard sale. At stake are local tax dollars generated by local taxpayers for local schools, under the supervision of locally elected school board officials. The notion that unelected state officials should be able to intercede and overrule local officials in how that money is spent is unacceptable.

Furthermore, no such change is needed to create a healthy, thriving charter school movement in Georgia, because such a movement already exists. The state Department of Education lists more than 135 charter schools, most of them approved by local school boards, and the list continues to grow. That’s great; charter schools are a necessary, useful and valued option.

However, the language in the amendment goes far beyond charter-school funding. If enacted, it would put great new power in the hands of legislators eager to dismantle the state’s public education system.

Supporters of the resolution claim such fear is groundless. According to state Rep. Jan Jones of Milton, the House majority leader, HR 1162 would merely restore power to the state stripped away by the Supreme Court.

“The problem with the state Supreme Court’s decision is that it explicitly stated that school boards have exclusive control over general k-12 public education,” Jones claims. “The decision calls into question whether state government has any meaningful role, except, perhaps, for putting a check in the mail.”

Yet the court decision does no such thing, and Jones and other legislators know it does no such thing. Their behavior speaks more honestly than their words.

If the state can no longer regulate local education, as they claim, why does the Legislature continue to churn out bill after bill regulating local school boards, right down to dictating the means by which schools notify parents that their children have too many unexcused absences?

And if the state can no longer impose rules on school boards, as Jones and others claim, why haven’t legislators tried to dismiss all the bureaucrats at the state Department of Education paid to enforce the “unconstitutional” regulations already on the books?

HR 1162 is an overreach by state officials hoping to create a de facto private school system funded with public dollars. Supporters honestly believe that it would improve Georgia’s educational performance, although around the country there is no evidence that is true.

However, supporters should advocate that approach honestly to the people of Georgia, rather than try to achieve revolutionary change under the cover of business as usual.

– Jay Bookman

The White House is “all talk, no action” on moving toward compromise, said Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “There has been a lot of talk in the last couple days about compromise, but it sounds to us like a way to turn down the heat, to placate people without doing anything in particular,” Picarello said. “We’re not going to do anything until this is fixed.”

That means removing the provision from the health care law altogether, he said, not simply changing it for Catholic employers and their insurers. He cited the problem that would create for “good Catholic business people who can’t in good conscience cooperate with this.”

“If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I’d be covered by the mandate,” Picarello said.

In other words, the bishops are not merely demanding that church-affiliated organizations be exempted from the requirement that contraception be covered in health insurance. They are insisting that the contraception requirement be abolished altogether.

The proposed legislative fix endorsed by the bishops, HR 1179, makes that explicitly clear. It states that no insurer or employer can be required to provide coverage if paying for such coverage “is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or (if) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.”

Again, that is not a fix limited to churches or church-affliated organizations. It would prohibit the contraception requirement across the board, for every employer and insurer.

If you had any doubts about how political this all is, that ought to resolve them. Twenty-eight states, including conservative Georgia, have had laws on the books for years that require contraceptives be covered, with not a squeak of protest or complaint.

And yet now it becomes a threat to religious liberty?

– Jay Bookman

I’m sure that will be the theme of “Fire From the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman,” featuring Michele Bachmann and Ann Coulter. (Later in the conference, Coulter will be available to sign her new book, “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America.”) And nothing says “big-tent Republicans” more than a panel on “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity.”

At 1 p.m. today, you can bond with like-minded gold bugs at a panel on “The Need for a Twenty-first Century Gold Standard,” and if you strike out there, no worries. Boogie on over to “Conservative Dating – Learn everything from how to avoid scaring away your own personal Dagny Taggart in the first five minutes of the conversation, to whether Tea Partiers and Occupiers can share something more than a dislike for bailouts.”

And no, I am not making that up.

One of the featured speakers this morning will be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a statesman who apparently is so proud of his upcoming remarks that he has leaked them early to the press, just to build excitement.

As Politico reports:

“Senate Minority Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to launch a fierce attack on the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, calling out “liberal thugs” for intimidating their opponents in the name of political expediency.

In a biting attack aimed at throwing red meat to a restive conservative base, McConnell will tell the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday that the “liberal playbook” boils down to this: “Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and then polarize it.”

“But rarely have we seen those tactics employed with the kind of zeal that we see today. This White House and its lieutenants have made an art form out of the orchestrated attack,” the Kentucky Republican will say, according to excerpts provided to POLITICO.

“They’ve shown they’ll go after anybody or any organization that they think is standing in their way.”

You never used to hear those two words, “liberal” and “thugs,” in the same phrase. Apparently the old stereotype of the white-wine-sipping effete liberal intellectual has been replaced by the concept of thuggish liberals out to dominate and intimidate their opponents. I think that says a lot about how conservatives must be feeling these days.

I’m also amused at McConnell’s complaint about a Democratic strategy to “Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and then polarize it.” I’ve never heard it described that way, but it sounds precisely like the strategy used by conservatives to demonize Nancy Pelosi and before that Tom Daschle, the mild-mannered Senate majority leader from South Dakota.

And then of course there’s the übervillian, Barack Obama. Here’s a smattering of the themes or books scheduled to be discussed this week at CPAC:

– “Islamic Law in America: How the Obama Justice Department Is Selling Us Out”
– “Obama vs. The Constitution: How a Harvard Law Graduate President Is Shredding the Constitution”
– “Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation”
– “Obama’s Agents Are Reading Your Emails: Privacy Concerns of the Digital Age”
– “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department”

I do love the smell of paranoia in the morning.

– Jay Bookman

U.S. companies, facing slowing markets and rising costs around the world, are taking a new look at their home market.

With growth slowing in China and a slump gripping much of Europe, companies are adding capacity in the U.S., replacing aging equipment and even moving overseas production back from low-cost labor markets, a sign that corporate America could be poised to take a bigger role in the economic recovery….

“It is an environment that feels like it is building momentum,” William Plummer, United Rentals’ chief financial officer, said in an interview. “We are coming out of the depths of the recession and are starting to build momentum on the upside.”

U.S. businesses increased their investments in December. According to the Commerce Department, new orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft, a proxy for how much companies spend on equipment, climbed 2.9% from November. That ended two months of declines, suggesting businesses are becoming more confident. Compared with a year earlier, companies shipped 9% more.

I suspect that stories like that — or more accurately the facts reported in stories like that — have a lot to do with trends like this, documenting the rise in Obama’s re-election stock via Intrade. Because it doesn’t include today’s rise to 60.8 percent, the chart actually understates the rise in bettors’ faith in re-election.

On the other hand, there’s Congress. Gallup now reports that public approval of Congress has now dropped to a record and rather astounding 10 percent, with a record disapproval of 86 percent.

You have to believe that numbers that dramatic will produce larger-than-usual turnover in Congress this year, especially since so many incumbents are being drawn into new districts after the 2010 Census. (Among independents, congressional job approval has sunk into single digits at 8 percent).

For comparison’s sake, approval of Congress was at 21 percent in October of 2010, just before Democrats lost control of the House. It was at 26 percent in 2006, when Republicans lost both the House and Senate. And it was at 23 percent in 1994, when a huge 54-seat swing put Republicans in charge of the House.

– Jay Bookman

Georgians ought to take immense pride in the fact that their state legislators possess more honesty and integrity than those of almost any state in the country.

Or so we’ve been told.

In most other states, as well as in Congress, weak-willed legislators have found it necessary to protect themselves from temptation by limiting or outright banning gifts from lobbyists. Those out-of-state legislators apparently fear that without a limit or ban, they might start to think too favorably of a lobbyist who gives them, say, an all-expense-paid trip to Europe, or sky-box seats to a football game, or free food, golf and lodging at a resort, or a $200 night on the town at a fancy restaurant.

Down in Florida, for example, the only gifts that state legislators allow themselves to take are floral arrangements or similar “celebratory items” to mark the opening day of an annual legislative session. Legislators in South Carolina are equally prone to temptation, which is why the law makes it illegal for lobbyists to give them “(1) lodging; (2) transportation; (3) entertainment; (4) food, meals, beverages, money, or any other thing of value…”

But in the Georgia General Assembly, where honor and virtue run as pure and clear as a north Georgia mountain spring, legislators put no limit whatsoever on the value of gifts they can legally accept from lobbyists. They rest comfortably in the knowledge that no matter how ardently they are plied with liquor, meals, golf outings, airplane travel and sports and entertainment tickets, among other things, they cannot be dissuaded from deciding issues purely on their merits.

As a result, their attitude is “bring it on! … bring it ALL on!” They are so confident in their ability to stay unbought and unbossed that they are just one of three state legislatures in the entire country with neither a ban or restriction on lobbyists gifts.

Doesn’t that just make you swell up with pride?

Me, I’m not convinced. And neither is state Sen. Josh McKoon, a Republican from Columbu. This week, McKoon and nine fellow Republican senators introduced an ethics-reform bill that would put a $100 limit on the value of gifts that legislators can accept from lobbyists.

“There has got to be a point where we draw a line in the sand and say ‘no more’,” McKoon said in a Monday press conference, calling it “an important first step to restoring public trust.”

The large number of Republicans willing to co-sponsor the bill in the Senate stands in stark contrast to the Georgia House, where Speaker David Ralston has in effect proclaimed such legislation an unnecessary insult to his chamber’s vaunted integrity. And if the bill can be passed in the Senate, it adds to the political pressure on House leadership to pass legislation supported overwhelmingly by the voters of Georgia.

Unfortunately, Senate Democrats have so far refused to endorse McKoon’s effort, arguing that the legislation is not strong enough. According to Senate Minority Leader Steve Henson, “it is apparent after looking at this legislation that they have given up on doing anything substantive. We need to create real change not just change how people file reports and manipulate the system.”

That criticism is unjustified, and in fact it comes across as an effort by Senate Democrats to gain partisan advantage on an issue in which partisan politics should play no role. Senate Bill 391, introduced by McKoon, would go a long way toward protecting Georgia legislators from temptations that they claim not to feel, and conscientious senators and representatives of both parties should embrace it.
———————

Two other points, one related and one not:

– On the ethics front, go read Jim Walls’ report at Atlanta Unfiltered on state Sen. Don Balfour, who as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee is one of the most powerful people under the Gold Dome. Jim lays out pretty clearly how Balfour has egregiously abused the legislative per diem and expense systems.

– For those interested, I’ll be doing my annual “Real State of the Union” address Friday, Feb. 10 at Seven Stages theater in Little Five Points. Reception at 7 p.m., speechifying begins at 7:30. Also appearing will be the ever-witty Andisheh Nouraee, co-auther of the well-received “Americapedia: Taking the Dumb Out of Freedom.”

This is the 10th annual speech, and it’s always a full house, so come early. First come, first seated.

– Jay Bookman

The diligent Rick Santorum had earned himself a good night, and last night he got a very good one. Three races were contested — a non-binding primary in Missouri and caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota — and Santorum won all three.

He won easily in Missouri (up by 30 points) and Minnesota (winner by 28). Newt Gingrich was a non-factor across the board, an ominous sign for the Harrisburg Haranguer. His insistent demands that Santorum abandon the race ring even more hollow this morning.

But the real loser is Romney. Four years ago, he won Minnesota with 42 percent. This year, as the inevitable nominee, he came in third behind Ron Paul, getting 17 percent of the vote.

Four years ago, he won Colorado easily with more than 60 percent of the vote. He got 35 percent this year. He also got a lower percentage of the votes in Missouri than in 2008, with Santorum taking well over 50 percent.

None of that can be spun as good news for Romney. His campaign staff is stuck attempting to argue that it’s less bad than it might seem, pointing out that delegates were at stake only in Minnesota and that Romney didn’t really campaign or spend money on these races.

All true. But those states also weren’t hotly contested by the other candidates, and the results tell us that left to their devices, Republican voters still aren’t convinced by Romney.

Romney will still be the nominee. Attempts by those such as Quin Hilyer at National Review to argue that “Rick Santorum can win the Republican nomination. Rick Santorum can indeed beat Barack Obama in the fall” simply do not convince. Santorum can do neither.

But he certainly did have a very good night, earning more than enough momentum to stay in the race and proving yet again that GOP doubts about their future nominee are valid.

– Jay Bookman

As many of you know, churches that are members of the Southern Baptist Convention are not allowed to hire women as pastors. The Baptists base that practice on 1 Timothy 2:12, in which Paul writes that “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man.” The Catholic Church follows a similar practice, based on similar reasons.

Ordinarily, it would be illegal under federal law to deny a woman a position of leadership or authority on the basis of gender. I think most Americans probably support those laws by now. However, because the selection of priests and ministers is so central to religious faith, and because those leaders perform an essentially religious rather than secular role, anti-bias laws don’t apply to such jobs. Doing so would clearly infringe on religious liberty, which is protected under the First Amendment.

However, if a Baptist university denied tenure to an English professor solely because she was female, or if a Catholic hospital refused to hire a woman as its CEO, the exemption cited above would not apply. In both cases, the law has long held that the professor and CEO are performing a largely secular function in the secular world, so secular rules apply.

That is essentially the same logic used to develop proposed rules for health-care coverage, which by federal law require insurers to provide coverage for contraception.

Those rules do not apply to what is known as “a religious employer,” defined as an employer that “(1) Has the inculcation of religious values as its purpose; (2) primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets; (3) primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.”

A church, mosque, synagogue or other house of worship would qualify for such an exemption. However, a church-run university, hospital, day-care center, etc. — entities that do not have the inculcation of religious values as its purpose, that do not primarily employ persons who share its religious tenets; and do not primarily serve persons who share its religious tenets — would not be exempt.

Those entities are performing a secular function, in the secular world, and employing in most cases people with a wide variety of religious beliefs. Therefore, the people working in those entities deserve the same degree of legal protection as their fellow Americans.

Disagree? Tell me why. And let’s keep it on public policy and not descend into degrading commentary about the relative worth of various religious beliefs.

– Jay Bookman