Home Is Where The Corazon Is

At center, that's Paul McShane of St. John's Episcopal Church, helping two brothers raise the roof of a house for Raul and Beatrice Rubio Puc and their four children, residents of a neighborhood on the western outskirts of Tijuana. More later about our day in Mexico under the auspices of Corazon, which has been helping the people of northern Baja California for 30 years, supported by the elbow grease of church communities and other people of faith. We're all pretty tired, notwithstanding the smiles on the faces of the Rubio Puc family and the people of St. John's. When we arrived at 7 a.m. this morning, there was a slab; when we left, there was a home. To be honest, the mind boggles. Well done, good and faithful servants!

Tasty Repost

Historian and former Nixon Project tapes specialist Maarja Krusten posted my account of Kathy's and my Nixon Library visit yesterday on the message board of the Society of American Archivists, along with some gracious comments. Thanks, MK!

Is That Like Tin Soldiers And Nixon?

Battling in a tough race against GOP candidate Van Tran in Orange County's 47th congressional district, Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana) recently said:

The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, (trying) to take this seat...

I was surprised to find this way back on page A-13 of the Orange County Register. Loose talk about "the Mexicans," when one is discussing U.S. taxpayers of Mexican descent, went out of fashion long ago. Do Vietnamese-Americans deserve any less respect? (It turns out OC Weekly broke the story on Monday. Before then, neither the Register nor the Tran campaign had noticed Sanchez's gaffe.)

She went on to call Tran "anti-immigrant" (though he's an immigrant himself) and "anti-Hispanic." Since Sanchez was being interviewed on a Spanish-language station, it looks like she's trying to keep her job by inciting resentment among members of one ethnic group against another -- just the kind of enlightened, responsible leadership America needs these days.

Reporter Doug Irving said Tran, a member of the state assembly, has asked for an apology.

Call Me Crazy

"The New Republic" presents a "comprehensive guide to the craziest statements Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell has made in public" and includes this:

Sex is a covenant between a man and a woman and God. … Your job is to satisfy the other, the giving of oneself to another. Porn turns that around.

Overtly theological, yes. Heterosexist, perhaps. But crazy? I'd say truthful. Covenantal servanthood (or mutuality, if you prefer a secular term) is one of the keys to a joyful human life. It's little evidences such as this of the divide between elites and, if I may, everyday Americans that has me thinking not only that the GOP is going to run the table in November but that Christine O'Donnell's probably going to win in Delaware.

Carter The Conseservative

A Cato Institute (read libertarian) expert writes:

Conservatives condemn Carter's ineffectual foreign policy, but his successful stewardship of the Camp David Accords made him the best presidential friend Israel's ever had. At home, by serially deregulating airlines, trucking and railroads, the man from Plains broke special-interest strangleholds over transportation, helping usher in the dynamic, competitive economy of the '80s.

To tame soaring inflation, Carter appointed tight-money man Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve chairman, and, at great political risk, grit his teeth through the deepening recession.

"Because of Carter's fear of exacerbating inflation," [author Ivan] Eland adds, "he courageously refused to support an expensive proposal by Senator Edward Kennedy to provide federally funded national health insurance for all Americans."

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan

Another Shariah Snuff Film

From the "Clash of Civilizations? What Civilization?" desk, another report from the frontiers of primitive savagery:

Al Aan, a Dubai-based pan-Arab television channel that focuses on women's issues, said it had obtained cellphone footage that it says shows a woman being executed because she was seen out with a man. The killing reportedly took place two months ago and was smuggled out by a Taliban member who attended the stoning...

"Who attended the stoning"? Sounds like he bought a ticket. Maybe he did. I'd have called him "a Taliban member who was an accessory to first-degree murder."

While the video was reportedly shot in Pakistan, ABC's Brian Ross said these murders of women also occur in Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, with two of which we hare cordial diplomatic relations. If they were murdering not women but...Oh, never mind.

Watch where you click. While ABC only shows a brief excerpt, it's gruesome enough.

Purple Plate Special

LA Episcopal Bishop Suffragan Diane Jardine Bruce on her new vanity plates:

Yes, I know, that word doesn't exist yet in Spanish. Yet. I believe in changing the world one license plate at a time -- obispa is a feminine form of the word obispo which means BISHOP. Spanish speakers at the Cathedral Center at first shook their heads when they saw it. La Obispo is how they referred to me.

Styx And Stones

Rows and rows of carefully numbered and labeled boxes enclose the complex and far-reaching historical legacy of Richard Nixon and his presidency -- and now, finally, they're filling shelves near his birthplace in Yorba Linda, at the federal Nixon library.

The library opened as a nongovernmental institution, without any White House materials, in 1990. Beginning in 1994, the year Nixon died, his last chief of staff, Kathy O'Connor, and I spent 13 years trying to get the records home. We worked with the National Archives and Justice Department, scholars who were skeptical of our motives, friendly Nixon family members, hostile ones who shot down our first attempt in 1996-7, Nixon foundation board members and Watergate-era operatives who never understood why we were doing it in the first place, and finally blue-chip lobbyists who got about $1 million to knock the right heads together on Capitol Hill.

The handover finally occurred in May 2007, though the records, which made the journey from College Park, Maryland to California in 12 thundering semis, weren't ensconced in the library's new archives addition until this summer, after Kathy and I had left. So this afternoon the library's director, Tim Naftali, graciously gave us the cook's tour of his gleaming new historical digs.

Tim's steward of about 40 million pages of paper records, half of them processed and ready for researchers (comprising most of the really vital documents). Only the famous White House tapes remain in Washington, though before long, Tim told us, their content will be on line. For now, it was a treat to see five scholars hard at work late in the afternoon in the reading room, studying one of the richest collections in presidential history.

The library also now houses thousands of precious gifts of state. Some of the most beautiful pieces -- paintings, sculpture, jewelry, clothing, and more -- are on display in a world-class exhibit, "Treasures From the Vault," which is open through mid-January.

Our longtime former colleague Olivia Anastasiadis, the library's curator, organized the show -- as she did our mid-1990s exhibit "Rockin' The White House: Four Decades Of Presidents And Popular Music." It included videos of White House performances from the Kennedy to the Clinton administrations, all narrated by MTV's former VJ Kennedy (no relation), who was lined up by my current St. John's School colleague Noah McMahon.

Our "Rockin'" poster featured a photo of Tricia Nixon smiling stiffly as hirsute Mark Volman of the Turtles whispered in her ear. Exhibit and poster designer Eric Guard called it "Barbie goes to hell." Not that he's complaining, but getting the Nixon library launched must sometimes have seemed to be a Stygian slog to Tim Naftali, who's faced challenges that are unprecedented in the history of presidential libraries. And yet as he begins his fifth year as director, we were proud to see all he's accomplished -- so far.

Coffee With The Bishop

In her and Steve's own backyard, Bishop Suffragan Diane Jardine Bruce this morning welcomed us Episcopal deacons and priests working in south Orange County, California (we call it our Deanery Ten Clericus, to confuse others and occasionally ourselves). Bishop Bruce briefed us on her second House of Bishops' meeting last week in Arizona (which made news for its work on immigration reform and by asking one of its number to resign) and also touched on her passions for multicultural ministry, about which she addressed her fellow bishops last week, and the emergent church.

Seated with her were our dean, Peter Haynes (center) and Vincent Schwahn, interim rector at St. Clement's by-the-Sea Church in San Clemente, where the bishop served until being consecrated and ordained, along with her fellow Bishop Suffragan Mary Douglas Glasspool, in May. We're doubly excited by Bruce family ministry at St. John's since the bishop will lead our women's retreat next spring and Steve will do the same for our men next month.

Ice Tea Already

Andrew Sullivan shows how the GOP's new manifesto weenies out on spending.