By Jeffrey Page

The Supreme Court, in its questioning during the challenge to California’s anti-gay marriage measure, hinted that now’s not the time. Not the time for equality? What are decent people, on the right and left, supposed to make of this?

It’s like telling a man in the emergency room that now’s not the time to work on what appears to be a heart attack. It’s like telling a woman with a hungry baby that now’s not the time to offer a bottle of formula.

And of course then comes that bothersome question – if not now, when?

Question 1: How often will America tolerate gutless politicians and judges who offer the old do-nothing response of “The time is not right,” or “Wait a while longer,” or “Put your feeble interpretation of ‘equal rights’ on hold?”

Question 2: Precisely how long are people supposed to wait for the rights and privileges afforded to everyone else?

Progress often is difficult, but because it is necessary to a free society, it must be pursued with courage and vigor. It can’t be placed on a back burner, and the people who seek such progress can’t be shunted aside as mere inconveniences.

Which is not to say that crusades are easily won, because generally speaking, the Americans most in need of change have not been straight white men – the class that runs things. They generally do not need redress on such matters as equal rights, and as a result often block the progress sought by others.

The time may be wrong for gay marriage?

When it comes to recognizing that all people must have identical rights or else the great experiment fails, America seems to move at molasses speed. For example, it took 131 years since the founding for our politicians to get around to an understanding that women are citizens, too, and therefore must be allowed to vote.

It took 176 years until we could pass a Voting Rights Act (and some people are trying now to un-do it), 76 years to outlaw slavery, 79 years to grant citizenship to all who were born here or naturalized here, 81 years to allow all citizens (but not women; their right would come 50 years later) to vote.

Clearly, what progress needs is some valorous people to stand up to the forces of darkness, valor such as displayed by one of my favorite heroes, Joseph Welch, a little known Boston attorney. In 1954, Welch looked Joe McCarthy in the eye and said, in a different context, “Senator, you’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

And that was the beginning of the end of the McCarthy reign of terror. I believe Joseph Welch had more courage than the 531 members of Congress in total.

To end the sanctioned bigotry against gay people who insist on having the same rights as the rest of the population, it will take more judges and more politicians who refuse to duck out of a showdown with evil with the excuse “now’s not the time.”

In fact, to grant to all Americans the rights that most now enjoy, there has never been a better time than right now.

By Jeffrey Page

There is something laughable in the breast beating and soul searching of the Republican Party as it tries to figure out how to remain opposed to immigration while trying to persuade Latinos that it loves them, wants them and welcomes them.

Following President Obama’s reelection, the GOP has backed itself into many corners. There was immigration. Then came the matter of what women should or should not be allowed to do with their own bodies. The Republicans want lots more young people to join their ranks, but many younger people, according to most polls, are pro-choice. Still, the Tea Drinkers who have taken over the party are pro-life and unwilling to give an inch.

This is what caused Jeb Bush to declare, in a moment of self-examination at the recently concluded Conservative Political Action Conference: “All too often we’re associated with being ‘anti’ everything. Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker, and the list goes on and on and on. Many voters are simply unwilling to choose our candidates even though they share our core beliefs, because those voters feel unloved, unwanted and unwelcome in our party.” The response was tepid.

Modern day Republicans – with their birther madness, their eagerness to scrap the Voting Rights Act, their refusal to recognize the equality of their gay and straight members – remind me of the way Groucho Marx sang about the character he played in the movie “Horse Feathers” 81 years ago:

“I don’t know what they have to say./ It makes no difference anyway./Whatever it is, I’m against it./No matter what it is or who commenced it,/I’m against it.”

The Republicans want to freshen their image? If the response to Bush was lukewarm, the keynote speaker got a standing ovation when he declared in classic demagoguery, “We saw every single Republican in the Senate vote unanimously to defund Obamacare. Every Democrat voted together to maintain Obamacare funding, even if it pushes us into a recession [emphasis added].”

The speaker was Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. If the Republicans are looking to clean up their image, they’re going to have trouble with people like Cruz and the former one-term House member Allen West of Florida. Both have shown themselves to be the reincarnation of Joe McCarthy.

In 1950, McCarthy went from Senate back bencher to overnight sensation when he held up a piece of paper at a speaking engagement in West Virginia and declared that he had a list of 205 State Department employees who were communists.

In his book “Proofiness,” Charles Seife posits that allegations take on important believability when preceded by a number – McCarthy remained unknown the first time he alleged there were communists working at the State Department. But he started to be taken seriously when he said there were “205” communists at State. What apparently escaped notice 63 years ago was the fact that not long after, McCarthy said his list of subversives bore the names of 207 [sic] people at the State. The very next day he wrote to President Truman to complain that little was being done about those 57 [sic] security risks. Later, Seife reports, the number rose to 81[sic].

In fine McCarthy fashion three years ago, Ted Cruz charged that there were 12 communists on the Harvard Law School faculty. He didn’t name them. More recently, when Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense ran into a GOP roadblock, Cruz came close to questioning Hagel’s loyalty.

Before Cruz there was Allen West of Florida – elected in 2010 with 54.3 percent of the vote and defeated in 2012 with 49.6 percent. In that one term, West told a gathering in Florida that he had “heard” there were about 80 communists serving in the House of Representatives. And wouldn’t you know it, all 80 were Democrats.

West also said: “If Joseph Goebbels was around, he’d be very proud of the Democrat party, because they have an incredible propaganda machine.”

If the GOP has any hope of becoming a majority party it needs to disassociate itself its own demagogues and hate mongers.

By Jeffrey Page

This week I discovered that the woman who I believe saved my life – she pooh-poohs such talk – might be earning slightly less than the people who flip burgers at McDonald’s. How could that be?

She’s a meeting leader for Weight Watchers, which I joined around Christmas of 2006 when I felt lousy, looked awful and was dangerously overweight. My idea of physical activity was a walk from the newsroom to the cafeteria for coffee and a cheese Danish. (That was my early morning break; others would follow through the day.) Walking up the 14 steps to the second floor of my house left me panting. I thought the world was always watching and judging me but now I think I was actually invisible. Once, an editor put me in touch with a woman he knew in Colorado who lost a lot of weight. We talked and I promptly forgot everything she said.

Eventually, and after arthroscopic surgery to fix a knee injured by excess weight and after another scary look in full-length mirror, I got to a Weight Watchers meeting. I filled out some paperwork, but was not optimistic; I had done things like this before. I got on the scale, which showed a number that I thought had been reserved for certain stories in Ripley’s Believe it or Not or certain attractions at Ringling Bros.

I changed, due in large part to a great meeting leader who, like all WW leaders, lost a lot of weight before being hired. Now, I go to a Weight Watchers meeting every Tuesday. I go to the gym five days a week. I feel like a different person; I guess I am. I bought jeans for the first time in 25 years. I still have a way to go. The program works.

I’ve dropped 110 pounds, but this is no advertisement for Weight Watchers.

This is a testament to two great women who led the meetings I attended, and it’s also challenge to Weight Watchers to start treating their people better. The Times story reports widespread unhappiness among meeting leaders over low pay and other money issues. True to their calling, I should make clear that no Weight Watchers employee ever uttered a word of criticism to me.

That first Weight Watchers leader offered a hand to shake at meetings. She was straightforward about her own weight loss of 55 pounds and the fact that she had kept it off for 11 years. She was enthusiastic. She listened well. She made you believe in yourself. She always offered encouragement that didn’t sound like a rehearsed company line. She knew what we were going through. She had been there and succeeded; now she wanted us to join her. She assured us it was possible. She showed us her “before” picture.

You? I asked. It was her. I was a believer.

Sometimes, if I missed a meeting I’d get an email or a postcard from that first leader saying, as she always said at meetings, that she cared about her members and that she was available for talks and for help in problem times. Was something not working, she would ask, we can fix it. Was I bored with the program? We could fix that as well because, after all is said and done, the program works and, in Weight Watcher talk, no food tastes as good as thin looks.

She has since moved out of state, succeeded by a leader with boundless energy and a great sense of humor, another person whose “before” picture looks like someone else.

The Times story suggests that there’s a dark side to the Weight Watchers Empire, and that as much as its members admire their meeting leaders, WW Central seems to hold them in far less esteem.

I pay $13 a week dues, and it galls me to know precisely how little gets to the meeting leaders. Their base pay is $18 a meeting (higher for better attended meetings). The last time leaders got a raise was more than 10 years ago. I don’t like this but I will continue to go to the meetings, which have – along with my first leader – saved my life. As a friend says, $13 a week to talk and listen and even to get a few interesting recipes is far less than the cost of cardiac surgery.

Additionally, if a leader is interested in making money that even approaches a decent wage, she (most are women) would have to run several meetings a week. But Weight Watchers offers a daily mileage reimbursement only after a leader travels the first 40 miles.

Moreover, a leader in Texas told The Times that Weight Watchers allows two and a half hours per meeting but that more is needed. The time includes setting up a meeting space, weighing members, conducting the meeting itself, cleaning up, selling Weight Watchers products, and doing other chores. The Texas leader said this easily takes three hours.

Unhappy leaders also told of their irritation over being paid a pittance while Weight Watchers spends big bucks to hire people like Jennifer Hudson and Jessica Simpson to pitch the program in its advertising.

David Kirchhoff, the CEO, got just under $3 million in 2011. Faced with joyless meeting leaders, he recently told them that two priorities at Weight Watchers are to “improve your working life” and to improve “the way we reward you for the incredible work you do.”

Of course, he also said pay changes are complicated and would “require careful consideration,” The Times reported.

If employee satisfaction is important to WW, it should understand and accept the old maxim that money talks. As someone who has benefitted greatly I urge Weight Watchers to make that money talk soon.

Especially now, after 10 years.

By Jeffrey Page

There are times when it’s best to just shut up and do the right thing. Correct a mistake. Make explicit that which is vague. Banish doubt and misunderstanding. Such a time is now and at issue is some extraordinary license taken in the making of the movie “Lincoln.”

Truth in Journalism: I had not been aware of the inaccuracies in this movie until I read Maureen Dowd’s column in last Sunday’s Times.

By now, you probably know the story. Tony Kushner spent seven years writing the Lincoln screenplay, which focuses on the politics in the House of Representatives during debate and voting on passage of the 13th Amendment, the 43-word declaration that slavery was now and forever banned in the United States.

The movie depicts the two Connecticut members of the House voting against the proposed amendment when, in fact, they voted for it. To further confuse matters, just about all characters in the movie are identified by their real names – Lincoln, Seward, Grant, Stanton, et al. – but the two men from Connecticut are assigned pseudonyms.

You can’t libel the dead, but this portrayal of the vote comes close. At best it’s a mistake that needs correcting. At worst, it’s history turned on its head in the name of dramatic license. In any case, it needs fixing.

Dowd reported in her Sunday piece that Kushner was outraged – her word – at the attention three-term Representative Joe Courtney, D-Conn had been receiving after he blew the whistle on the movie’s inaccuracies.

Dowd quoted Kushner as saying that in a movie, it’s all right to “manipulate a small detail in the service of a greater historical truth.”

Kushner goes on to lamely compare his mistaken history of voting on the proposed 13th Amendment with the absurd – and unasked – question of whether Abraham Lincoln wore blue socks or green. Then Kushner declares the matter “ridiculous.”

Socks and the end of slavery. A small detail? A valid comparison?

This is where Kushner stepped over the line. For, Augustus Brandegee and James Edward English were not insignificant back benchers with little to say.

“[Brandegee] zealously supported the anti-slavery movement when its supporters met contumely and contempt,” the Connecticut State Library said. “He rendered signal service to [the] cause of the Union and to the building up of the Nation after the Civil War…. His state counts him among her illustrious sons. His country is the better for his life.”

“He [Brandegee] was a knightly man – hypocrisy, shame, expedients, pretensions – the whole brood of lies and deceits – were his enemies. He fought them all his days and when the end came, passed over God’s threshold with escutcheon unstained and with plume untarnished,” said “A Modern History of New London County, Conn.”

English’s thoughts about slavery were more complicated, according to “A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven Counties” (1918).

“While as a democrat [sic] he fully recognized the constitutional right of the southern states to the possession of their slaves, he also felt that slavery was a monstrous injustice,” the New Haven County history observed.

That mighty sound like the opening words of a cop-out, but it was no such thing. “Long before the close of the [Civil War] it became evident to all thoughtful observers that the question of general emancipation must be met sooner or later, and Mr. English made up his mind to take the hazard and incur the odium of voting with his political opponents whenever, in his view, it became a political necessity,” the New Haven history continued.

Courtney has called on Steven Spielberg, the director of “Lincoln” to make corrections when the film is released on DVD, but Kushner opposes this because, he told Dowd, he thinks the question of his accuracy is a “made-up issue.”

Maybe, but for Kushner, now’s not the time to worry about a “made-up” issue. Now’s the time to make things right.

By Jeffrey Page

The Boy Scout pledge requires its adherents to obey the Scout Law. The Scout Law dictates that they will be all of these: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

I tried, but one summer at Ten Mile River Scout Camp in Sullivan County I stood on the dock of Crystal Lake trying to work up the nerve to jump into water over my head. I couldn’t do it. I was a lousy swimmer and deep water terrified me. For this, I was unceremoniously booted out of a prestigious senior unit by staff and friends. It was one of the more humiliating moments of my boyhood. They said I was not brave.

I may have run afoul of the bravery law when I was 12 years old, but I did far better than the adults who control the scout show now. When it comes to the question of letting gay boys be Boy Scouts, they are not loyal, not helpful, not friendly, not kind, and, God knows, not brave. In fact, in continuing to refuse to allow gay boys to join and serve, and gay adults to lead, the Boy Scouts of America define gutlessness.

Not to mention a world view right out of the Dark Ages, one that rejects the idea that a gay kid could be interested in learning to tie a square knot, applying a bandage, going on a hike, earning a merit badge in environmental science or public speaking, and maybe becoming an Eagle Scout.

The Boy Scouts of America – chartered by the Congress that represents us all – have had 103 years to do something about their anti-gay bias but have spent the 20th century ignoring the matter. It is now the 21st century, and they can’t disregard it any longer.

Will the organization change? Or will it maintain its cruel justification for banning gay kids by referring critics to another part of the Scout Pledge, which requires a boy to swear he will be “morally straight.”

As if to suggest that sexual orientation is a moral issue, when it is no such thing.

And as if to suggest that regulations cannot be amended. Of course the scouts should maintain trustworthiness, cheerfulness and the other 10 laws, but should add such traits as generosity and fairness.

Recently, when word got out that the matter of gay members was under discussion at the executive levels of the organization, the Scouts punked out and announced that they need another three months to conclude discussions on their membership requirements. Three months more after 103 years. This is no demonstration of bravery or of friendliness. In fact it would be comical if the victims of the Scouts’ 10th century ignorance were not children.

Surely the Boy Scouts of America understand that no matter how they decide, they will be attacked. End the ban and they alienate people who believe it’s still 1953, that the earth is a happy straight world where Ike is president, where the sky is always blue, and where all is well except for those nasty Russians.

If they maintain the ban the Scouts continue to incur the enmity of people who understand that the Scout Law ought not be a means of exclusion.

Now’s the time for the Scouts to be brave.

They might even consider expanding the law so that scouts would be required to be open-minded, respectful, honest, thoughtful, compassionate, and fair in addition to trustworthy, loyal, helpful, etc.

By Jeffrey Page

Does the war against children ever end? Here are some important recent stories you may have missed that illustrate the violence inflicted on kids as well as the seeming indifference some authorities display in prosecuting the abusers.

First, some numbers: In her Violence Against Children Act of 2011 (which died when it was referred back to committee), Senator Barbara Boxer noted that 248,000 crimes against children ages 12 to 17 were reported in 2007. That’s about 700 a day. Nearly 92,000 of the victims were under age 12. Boxer also noted that 65 percent of violent crimes against people ages 12 to 19 go unreported to the police.

* * *

I was struck dumb when Deborah Gomez, 43, of Chicago recently faced a judge in Kansas – where she had been charged with child endangerment – and then strolled out of court. Specifically, Gomez last June bound the hands and legs of her two youngest children, then blindfolded them and then left them in her car in a Walmart parking lot while she and her husband went to shop. The children were aged 7 and 5. The high temperature for the day was 87, pretty dangerous in a closed car.

Gomez pleaded no contest and the judge, clearly not as outraged as you and I might have been, sentenced her to one year on probation.

Gomez’s husband, Adolfo, was charged with misdemeanor counts of child endangerment and was to be sentenced later. A wire service report noted that Adolfo insisted the children be blindfolded and bound as a defense against demons.

The Gomezes’ three other children, ages 15, 13 and 12, also were locked in the car but were not restrained. They made no attempt to help the two youngest.

To be ordered to report to a probation officer every week for a year reminds me of the light sentences some judges have been known to hand down in some drunken driving cases. These are judges who justify such a degree of mercy with the idiotic chestnut “He didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

In the Gomez case, I think the Kansas Bar Association should order the judge to move in with the Gomezes, their children and their demons for a year while Mrs. Gomez reports to her probation officer.

* * *

Sometimes kids are abused by other kids, as often is the case in instances of bullying. Last Friday night, with a wind-chill of about 13, Freddy Martin, 9, was playing on the roof of a five-story building in the Bronx. So was Casmine Aska, 17, almost a grownup. Around 8:30 p.m., the police say, Casmine threw Freddy off the roof.

It was an accident, Aska is reported to have told the cops. While holding Freddy off the ground, Casmine turned and slipped and somehow dropped the younger kid off the roof.

Did Casmine call 911? No.

Did he tell his mother what happened? No.

Did he run downstairs to see if Freddy was all right? No.

Freddy somehow survived and was able to tell the cops who had dropped him. The Times quoted a neighbor as saying Freddy was “unrecognizable” as a result of his fall.

* * *

In rural Alabama, Jimmy Lee Dykes once beat a dog to death with an iron pipe and had threatened some elementary school children – they’d stepped  onto his property – with a gun. Now he was days away from a court hearing on charges that he had threatened a neighbor with a gun.

That incident was in December. But now it was February, and Dykes and his police record boarded a school bus in Midland City. When Dykes tried to grab two kids to take with him, the bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, put himself between Dykes and his gun. Dykes killed him in cold blood.

But Sykes got one kid, an autistic boy named Ethan, and took him to his underground bunker.

It took authorities about a week to finally work out a plan for Ethan’s rescue. There was an explosion and gun shots, and Dykes was dead. Ethan was not injured.

I’d like to meet the people in charge of Dykes’s current case. With his history of violent behavior, how could his December threatening-case have been delayed two months as he walked about?

Maybe Jimmy Lee Dykes was just a crazy old coot, but he was dangerous enough to move his case as quickly as possible and be done with him. I understand that. So do you. But the prosecutors didn’t? I don’t believe that for a minute.

* * *

In Queens, a couple was charged with shaking their baby daughter to death; she was 70 days old. The man was convicted and faces 15 years to life in prison. His wife went free; the district attorney dropped the charges against her. Both had spent five years in prison awaiting trial.

This is how screwed up the system is. Everyone wants to avoid trial. So it just goes on, with those in charge often seeming to go easy on child abusers. To avoid trial, prosecutors often accept a guilty plea to a reduced charge. And children keep dying.

* * *

Did it take you about 5 minutes to read this story? According to Boxer, that means almost 3 children were beaten or clubbed or shot or stabbed or otherwise abused since you first saw the headline.

By Jeffrey Page

Saxby Chambliss, the senior senator from Georgia, has announced he will retire next year. In this, there is a modicum of justice, for it was the loathsome Chambliss who reached new depths in electoral sliming a decade ago when he defeated the incumbent, Max Cleland. Do you remember?

Chambliss’ late-campaign strategy was so offensive and so false in its message about Cleland – admittedly a rare breed in Georgia, a moderate Democrat – that even some of Chambliss’ fellow Republicans forced him to yank an ad that suggested Cleland was an incompetent soldier. Chambliss even questioned Cleland’s patriotism.

During his service in Vietnam, Max Cleland was awarded the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars for his actions on the battlefield. Both medals are awarded for valor.

For the record, this is part of the Silver Star citation about Cleland’s conduct in early 1968 during the bloody three-month siege of Khe Sanh, where 700 American and South Vietnamese troops were killed: “When the battalion command post came under a heavy enemy rocket and mortar attack, Capt. Cleland, disregarding his own safety, exposed himself to the rocket barrage as he left his covered position to administer first aid to his wounded comrades. He then assisted in moving the injured personnel to covered positions.”

A few days later, while exiting a helicopter, Cleland leaned down to retrieve a grenade he thought had fallen from his pistol belt. The explosion nearly killed him. He survived but lost both legs and an arm. Displaying incredible determination, Cleland underwent grueling physical therapy and later entered government service, and then politics. He headed the Veterans Administration under Jimmy Carter, and then served 14 years as the Georgia secretary of state. In 2002 he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Saxby Chambliss challenged him six years later. Chambliss’ advertising contained separate newsreel footage showing Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Max Cleland – hint, hint – and went on to suggest there was something thoroughly unpatriotic, un-American, about Cleland’s votes against some of George W. Bush’s homeland security proposals. In Chambliss’ world view, the fact that Max Cleland left three limbs in Vietnam counted for nothing.

Chambliss’ ad campaign against Cleland was so outrageous that among its strongest critics were two GOP senators, John McCain and Chuck Hegel. They had served in Vietnam and understood war as Chambliss never could. Responding to them, Chambliss pulled the ads but the damage was done. The voters bought his trashing and Cleland was finished.

Chambliss’ military record: Four student deferments, followed by ineligibility due to a bad knee.

How bad a knee? In 2005, Roll Call reported that one afternoon while the Senate was in closed session to discuss the intelligence that led to the Iraq War, Chambliss was playing a round of golf with Tiger Woods back home in Georgia.

You’d think people would learn something about common decency after witnessing what Saxby Chambliss did to Max Cleland. But some politicians never seem to understand that there are times when you keep your mouth shut.

In the recent election, Joe Walsh, a Republican freshman from Illinois was challenged by Tammy Duckworth, whose wounds were eerily similar to Cleland’s. Duckworth lost her legs and the use of one arm when her helicopter was hit by enemy fire in Iraq. In words he surely will remember for the rest of his life, Walsh said of Duckworth’s injuries: “My God, that’s all she talks about. Our true heroes, the men and women who served us, it’s the last thing in the world they talk about.”

Walsh’s military record: None.

Duckworth beat him in November.

Here’s to the voters who sent Walsh packing.

By Jeffrey Page

–I liked it. But even more, I liked the attitude. For this was no happy thank-you. This was no self-congratulation. And this was no wise-acre government-is-the-problem complaint. This was a call to work for a better America.

–I liked Obama’s use of 18th century imagery that Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, other Congressional yahoos, and the Second Amendment crowd could understand (if not appreciate): “The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.” The message I took from the business of “privileges of the few” is that no longer will the middle class be required to preserve, protect and defend the insanely low tax rates of the wealthy.

–Obama’s several uses of “we the people” amounted to a message to those who forget that “we the people” are the first three words of the Constitution, and are quickly followed by “in order to form a more perfect union.” I may be politically naïve – I lost $5 betting on McGovern in ’72 – but the use of “we the people” suggests that it’s him and us together on this train, and if the forces of darkness want to hop aboard for the ride to enlightenment, that’s OK. But they’ve got to wipe the manure from their shoes. If, however, they choose to stand on the tracks to stop the train, they’d do well to bring their last political wills and testaments up to date. We’re not stopping, Obama said.

–“For we the people,” Obama said, “understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.” Maybe this time the right wing will understand that the poorest Americans are just that – Americans who are broke but not evil – and thus deserving of all the assistance the nation offers to the Chryslers, the Trumps, the Kochs, the Adelsons. Maybe the right will understand this, but I doubt it. I hope President Obama is aware of the coming struggles.

–The president said that we the people agree that every American “deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.” Which means to me, if not to the Tea Party, that when a hurricane ravishes a southern town, of course we rebuild and make repair. And if the storm wreaks havoc on the northeast we fix that as quickly as possible and do not play Tea Party budget games when people are made homeless. Sane human beings never would say: OK, here’s $1 for hurricane relief but you can have it only if you cut other spending by a like amount.

–Obama said children, “from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown,” must know that they are safe. I wish he had said something a little more substantive on the matter of guns.

–Doubtless, Obama recalled the GOP hand-wringing about saddling our children and grandchildren with current national debt when he chose the line: “We the people still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” There’s more than money to worry about.

–What I heard in Obama’s 2,126-word speech was a call to the opposition to get on board or get out of the way. Throughout his talk, I heard reminders to the Tea Party and its unhappy Republican backers that it was Barack Obama who won the election, not what’s-his-name. If they are to be taken seriously, Republicans should remember this.

–The GOP should also remember that when they let loose personal attacks on the president, they let loose on the majority of the American people that re-elected him. True to predictions, the turnout in Washington to bear witness to Obama’s second inauguration was lower than the first one four years ago. But let it be known on the right: He still drew 600,000 people to listen in bitter cold. The White House says it was more like 1 million. Pick a number and know that it was crowded in D.C.

–Clearly, the president will have tough going through 2017. For even as some Republican members of Congress were wishing him well in a second term, I heard a Tea Party woman from Texas express concern on National Public Radio that she still has yet to see Obama’s birth certificate. Again, Obama will have to deal with irrational nitwits who’ll say anything to make him look bad but who wind up looking foolish themselves. Recall, the genius Mitch McConnell saying in 2010 “the single most important [emphasis added] thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Recall the esteemed Sarah Palin warning us that part of Obama’s medical plan were “death panels.”

–If Obama was polite, at times almost obsequious, in his dealings with the GOP for the last four years, he sounded this week like a man who knows he’s been slapped and otherwise disrespected a few too many times. Will he give as good as he gets? Will he tell the next birther with a big mouth to get stuffed? I hope so.

–Obama reminded us of Martin Luther King’s definition of freedom; either we are all free or none of us is free. Those are words that should be recited by Americans every morning before breakfast. He said gay men and women ought to be treated “like anyone else under the law.” That’s a worthy morning prayer as well.

–Great speech. I wish him and us the best.

By Jeffrey Page

Not since Jerry Falwell looked into a TV camera 12 days after 9/11 and blamed the attack on lesbians, the ACLU and People for the American Way (among others) has an American politician uttered the vicious outrages Mike Huckabee has spewed in the days after the mass killings in Newtown, Conn.

Soon after the bloodshed, Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who has expressed presidential ambitions, was asked by Fox News how God could have allowed the massacre of 20 little children and six adults. His response defines the word “cruel” and displays a breathless lack of humanity.

It was all our faults.

At a time when the people of Newtown and another 300 million people of the United States needed comfort and a kind word, Huckabee decided to browbeat us by declaring that the shootings were the result of a lack of prayer in the public schools.

We have to be responsible for where our arguments lead us. I follow Huckabee’s reasoning like this: Whose fault is it that there is no compulsory prayer in the schools? I could compose a list of names, but the shorthand answer is the Supreme Court. And who sits there? Nine men and women appointed by a president. And who picks the president?

That would be us.

And among “us” are residents of Newtown, a place where it is unlikely that townspeople never marched on a school board meeting to demand a restoration of school prayer.

I don’t think God works this way; making little girls and boys pay for the inaction of the older people in town.

“It’s an interesting thing,” Huckabee said on Fox News. “We ask why there’s violence in our schools but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools.”

“Interesting?”

Huckabee doesn’t get it. Making school violence an “interesting” subject reduces the Connecticut tragedy – parents facing the incomprehensible truth of life without their children – to about the level of urgency and importance as trying to do the crossword puzzle in the Sunday Times. A new movie is “interesting.” The murder of babies is not “interesting.”

And “systematically removing” God from classrooms?

In fact we have done no such thing.

Some students pray in school whenever they wish, maybe before an algebra exam, maybe to thank God for another day, or for a dad’s recovery from illness, or for a date for the prom. But these are personal entreaties made by individuals, maybe in a whisper, maybe in silence. The First Amendment may rule against organized prayer in public institutions but prevent praying in schools? Kick God out? Never happened. Never could.

Most ministers understand that no one is powerful enough or, for that matter, stupid enough, to try to remove God from the schools. It can’t be done because, the clergy will tell you, God is with everyone all the time – even in school. Does Huckabee think that a mere schoolhouse door is going to keep the lord out?

Huckabee, continuing with the grace and mercy of a stampeding buffalo as Newtown parents arranged for the funerals of their babies, said, “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Of course we should be so surprised, and maybe a little astonished that someone with a public persona could be so insensitive to the misery and pain that has overcome Newtown.

By Jeffrey Page

I sit on a small footstool and gaze into her perfect little face as she rocks to and fro in a small indoor swing. She makes a little sound that reminds me of a sigh. I tell myself she’s content, at peace. I’m mesmerized – and can’t recall the last time I used that word – as I watch her eyes move right, left, and up and down, taking everything in, seeming to want to know things, to know everything.

Sometimes, when she’s in the crib, she does a baby thing; shakes her arms and flails her legs, and looks like a little bird about to take off. And I am delighted. But now she just gazes at anything that catches her fancy. She is 4 months old.

As I watch her take in a little of the world, I think of her mother when she was 7 asking me to take her to see “Annie” and my successful resistance. Now, so many years later, I wish I could live it again, pick up the phone, and buy the best seats in the house. Can’t be done, so I make a quiet oath that can be heard only by God, the baby and myself: If this granddaughter should ask for something that doesn’t interest me, I shall comply. Such compliance, I think, is listed among the requisites for good grandfatherhood, which I will strive to practice. Even if in seven years or so she asks me to take her to a revival of “Annie.”

Grandchildren are a second chance to get things right.

The little girl before me stops her bird imitation and her hands fall into her lap. She cries. Not the loudest, but with just enough gusto to capture your attention. Diaper? Hunger? A need to burp? Maybe boredom and a wish for a little walk around the house while being bounced slightly in my arms. I know she likes that. But then I notice that the pacifier she was happily sucking a second ago has fallen out of her mouth. I put it back, she gets to work.

Sitting here in front of her, I move a little to my right and she follows me with her dark blue eyes. Wait, did she just do what I thought she did? Was that recognition of me or just an awareness of movement? Of course I now move to my left, back to the first position, and she follows me again. I bend down and kiss her cheek, which, I’ve been surprised to discover, is not smooth as silk, but far smoother than mere silk. In mid-kiss, I’m aware of that sweet baby smell.

The indisputable truth, I tell her, is that she’s beautiful, that she’s cute, that she is a miracle, that I can’t wait until she speaks so we can talk about stuff or maybe just take in a matinee of “Annie.”

I tell her, “I want to hear what you have to say because, clearly, you are one smart little kid.” I make a funny face, and – the grandfather’s reward – she smiles and kicks the air.

People seem to get a little gaga over grandchildren. I try not to. Did you ever listen to otherwise serious people speak to a baby in that happy, squeaky little voice adults reserve for infants? Before she was born, I swore I would never do that, that I would take her more seriously than that. The funny thing is that when I tell her how smart and how beautiful she is, I do it in that happy, squeaky little voice adults reserve for infants.

Then I get my voice back, pick her up, and walk around the living room like a sergeant-major on parade and singing “The Grand Old Duke of York” with accompanying bounces. She likes that. She gives me another smile when I get to the line about the Duke’s 10,000 men being neither up nor down. Then I sing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” She likes that, too.

I think it was my daughter who first noticed that adults seem to say everything twice when it comes to talking to a baby. I knew I would never fall for that sort of nonsense, and had you been there, you would have heard me say in a deliberately raspy, allegedly funny tone, “You are a very special little girl; yes you are, and I love you.” And had you stayed another six seconds you would have heard me follow that with “You are a very special little girl; yes you are, and I love you.” Maybe I’m just a little gaga.

I put her back in the swing and give it a gentle push. In a minute or so, I see her eyes close, and then she’s fast asleep. I sit here on the footstool watching her go back and forth, watching her little right hand resting on her left wrist. I rub the back of my index finger gently across her cheek. I kiss her head.

She is magic. Her presence in a room improves the room. Her very existence improves the world. Other grandfathers say the same thing about their children’s children. And you know? They’re right, too.