Obama and Farrakhan

So, Roger Cohen noticed that Obama's pastor's magazine gave Louis Farrakhan an award, and he recoiled:

The Obama camp takes the view that its candidate, now that he has been told about the award, is under no obligation to speak out on the Farrakhan matter. It was not Obama's church that made the award but a magazine. This is a distinction without much of a difference. And given who the parishioner is, the obligation to speak out is all the greater. He could be the next American president. Where is his sense of outrage?

Henry Farell at Crooked Timber disagrees, and intimates that Cohen is holding Obama to a different standard because of his race:

There’s something else going on here. I strongly suspect that Barack Obama is being asked to condemn Louis Farrakhan not because there’s some bogus two-degrees-of-separation thing going on, but because Barack Obama is black, and because black politicians are supposed to condemn Louis Farrakhan before they can be trusted. This isn’t racism, but it’s an implicit double standard, under which black politicians have a higher hurdle to jump before they deserve public trust than white ones. More generally, this is a bad, wrongheaded, and even dangerous article. Richard Cohen shouldn’t have written it, and the Washington Post shouldn’t have printed it.

Fontana Labs at Unfogged agrees with Farrell:

Oh yes. Underneath this is the "show us you're one of the good ones!" demand that Obama has to meet in order to demonstrate that he's palatable to annoying white people like Cohen. Fuck a bunch of that, I say, but Obama cannot-- though it would be richly satisfying to hear him do it.

I really couldn't disagree more. It is perfectly fine for people to question Mitt Romney about the bizarre views of Mormons, including the fact that they were an officially a racist organization until the 1970s, as Christopher Hitchens has done. It is right and proper to ask Romney to denounce this past racism, and give an explanation for his participation in it. Similarly, it is perfectly appropriate to ask Obama why he patrons a church whose leader -- Jeremiah Wright -- offered an award to a demagogue such as Farrakhan, especially in the context of Wright's teachings in black liberation theology. It is fine to ask Obama to comment on this fact, and I would hope that he would respond by denouncing Farrakhan.

I don't see it as a function of Obama's race. One's of Obama's closest associates, from whom he got the title for The Audacity of Hope, on some level admires a racist and espouses a bizarre, conspiratorial religion. It is perfectly appropriate to ask Obama to clarify his views on this topic.

UPDATE: Obama did repudiate Farrakhan in the debate last night. Issue closed.

Thank God He's a Mormon

If Mitt Romney didn't belong to one of the wackier religions in the world, he might have a chance of being elected. This would be a bad thing, for reasons completely separate from his religious beliefs. Andrew Sullivan explains why:

Here's a fascinating interview with Sean Hannity, a man who would love the Republican candidate to campaign on torturing detainees. Of course, Fox News skews the debate by focusing entirely on the one in a million "ticking time-bomb" scenario. What else would you expect from Brit Hume? But Romney reveals in this clip that he does not believe the president is bound by the law in this question. He says that he will not provide a definition of "what is torture and what is not torture," because a president should be able to keep terror supects guessing. So he supports "enhanced interrogation techniques" and not torture, but refuses to say what the difference is. And he says the president gets to pick. And U.S. citizens are subject to this regime. The logic of Romney's position, then, is that the president can designate any human being or citizen an "enemy combatant," detain them indefinitely without charges or recourse to the courts, and torture them using any method he wishes as long as he says it's not torture and he is under no obligation to explain what torture is. This is tyranny. Period.

It is tyranny. But Sullivan needed to go one step further, and note that this is currently the official policy of the United States: torture is what Pres. Bush says it is. The tyranny already exists, and Romney is merely affirming it. as did Rudy, although he at least had the stones to come right out and say it:

"Last night's debate was about the definition of torture, and whether you — how you define torture, and I haven't changed my position one bit."

"I said, I don't think we should embrace torture, even in that situation."

"But I do think we should go right up to the limit in a situation like that. Which means enhanced techniques, aggressive techniques."

"It was quite clear in what I said, and I think honestly what Governor Romney said, that neither one of us was talking about torture. But we were talking about going further than Senator McCain was talking about."

"The technique that was being described last night [water-boarding] would not fit into the category of torture."

(bold by me)

the problem, of course, is that water-boarding is torture, no matter what Rudy's personal opinion happens to be. it is considered torture -- and therefore illegal -- by both domestic and international law. the Khmer Rouge believed it to be torture. the U.S. has tried and convicted people in past for water-boarding. the State Dept. says that it is illegal. The U.S. Army says it's illegal So it shouldn't matter what Rudy, or Romney, or Bush happens to think. Water-boarding should never be a practice of the United States, because it is against the law.

But the law is secondary to these guys. Imagining themselves as Pres. Palmer in an episode of 24 seems like a greater concern. Sullivan is right: this is tyranny.