Vast Borrowing Seen in Altering Social Security By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

The White House and Republicans in Congress are all but certain to embrace large-scale government borrowing to help finance President Bush’s plan to create personal investment accounts in Social Security, according to administration officials, members of Congress and independent analysts …

Borrowing by the government could be necessary to establish the personal accounts because of the way Social Security pays for benefits. Under the current system, the payroll tax levied on workers goes to benefits for people who are already retired. Personal accounts would be paid for out of the same pool of money; they would allow workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into accounts invested in mutual funds or other investments.

The money going into the accounts would therefore no longer be available to pay benefits to current retirees. The shortfall would have to be made up somehow to preserve benefits for people who are already retired during the transition from one system to the other, and by nearly all estimates there is no way to make it up without relying at least in part on government borrowing.

Mr. Bush and Republicans in Congress have paid little political price in the last four years for the swing from budget surpluses to deficits. But some polls show that Americans consider reducing the deficit to be a higher priority than many other goals, including cutting taxes, and embracing a new round of borrowing could pose political as well as economic risks. …

Mr. Bush has vowed to push hard to remake Social Security. Republicans in Congress say the White House has signaled to them that Mr. Bush will put the issue at the top of his domestic agenda in the coming year.

But the White House has never answered fundamental questions about Mr. Bush’s plan. In particular, it has not explained how it would deal with the financial quandary created by its call for personal accounts.

Christian-Republican alliance: Faustian bargain? – American Press Institute

Growing numbers of Christians are alarmed by the hijacking of their faith. In an editorial last week, Robert Parham of the moderate Baptist Center for Ethics vowed to “take on the religious right more forcefully — critiquing its false religion and anointment of the GOP as God’s Only Party.”

Meanwhile, emboldened by the perception that evangelicals decided the election, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and other evangelical leaders close to the White House are already lining up to claim the spoils. They expect to have the power to shape the Republican agenda on everything from constitutional amendments to Supreme Court appointments.

But before conservative Christians get too comfortable with this church-state alliance, they would do well to remember a bit of familiar wisdom: Those who seek power by riding the back of the tiger end up inside.

Colorado Luis

Rocky Mountain Progressive Network got hold of an e-mail from soon-to-be-ex-Colorado Senate President John Andrews (R-Centennial). It’s very revealing to see how Republicans deal with electoral disaster, so check it out. Andrews does not engage in any handwringing whatsoever about getting trounced at the polls for promoting an out-of-touch right wing social agenda. Instead, he’s getting a radio show and he’s going to promote that agenda tirelessly. I think there is a lesson for progressives here. It’s ridiculous to think we should retreat from what we stand for in order to win an election. What we need to do is get out there in the media and keep selling our own ideas. The advantage is more people agree with our values to begin with.

The Daily Outrage

Last weekend, The Washington Post reported that acute malnutrition among children in Iraq has doubled since before the US invasion in March of 2003. That is just one statistic, out of many, that paints a disturbing picture of the US occupation. After reading press dispatches, think-tank reports and public opinion polling, The Daily Outrage compiled this sampling of the facts on the ground. …

Infrastructure

** Of the $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds allocated last year by Congress, the US has spent only $1.7 billion.

** Nationwide electricity levels are down 25 percent since the prewar days, and 66 percent lower in Baghdad.

** The value of the Iraqi currency–the Dinar–dropped 25 percent compared to the US dollar in the past year (which didn’t have a great year itself!)

Iraqi Public Opinion

** Only 33 percent of Iraqis think they’re better off now than before the war, as a Gallup poll discovered.

** According to military statistics, the number of insurgents has quadrupled since last year, from 5,000 to 20,000. A British general places the insurgency at 40-50,000 fighters.

Honor The Fallen Memorial

The Honor the Fallen memorial is the only one of its kind in America. The memorial features a photograph and short biography of every American who has been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraq Freedom.

Rolling Back Women’s Rights NYTimes Editorial

Tucked into the $388 billion budget measure just approved by the House and Senate is a sweeping provision that has nothing to do with the task Congress had at hand – providing money for the government. In essence, it tells health care companies, hospitals and insurance companies they are free to ignore Roe v. Wade and state and local laws and regulations currently on the books to make certain that women’s access to reproductive health services includes access to abortion. …

This represents a vast expansion of the “conscience protection” that federal law currently gives to individual doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training.

The affront to women’s rights, moreover, should not obscure the serious threat to the First Amendment involved in enacting what is likely to evolve into a domestic “gag rule” as, one by one, health care providers order doctors they employ not to provide patients with information about the abortion option. This echoes the way Mr. Bush reimposed a blanket Reagan-era gag rule for providers of reproductive health services abroad on his first full day in office back in 2001.

Unfortunately, vocal opposition from Democrats and a handful of Republican moderates was not enough to stop the pernicious assault on the rights of millions of women from becoming law in the rush to pass the spending bill. … Americans, and American women in particular, are officially on notice that post-election, the Republican war on reproductive rights has entered an ominous new phase.

Giving the Law a Religious Perspective By ADAM LIPTAK

The class in civil procedure, at the new Liberty School of Law here, began with a prayer.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul,” said Prof. Jeffrey C. Tuomala, quoting Psalm 19. “The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.”

But decisions of the United States Supreme Court, Professor Tuomala went on, are not always trustworthy. “Something that is contrary to the law of nature,” he said, “cannot be law.”

The school, part of Liberty University, whose chancellor is the Rev. Jerry Falwell, is for now a makeshift affair in a vast industrial building that used to be a cellular phone factory. Its students compensate for the surroundings by dressing well – many of the men wore jackets and ties – and by showing attentive enthusiasm, even for a heavy dose of civil procedure at 8 a.m.

The school, which says its mission is to train “ministers of justice,” is part of a movement around the nation that means to bring a religious perspective to the law and a moral component to legal practice.

“People are realizing that some of the biggest issues of the day are being decided in the courts – the 2000 presidential election, the question of what is marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, cloning,” said Jeffrey A. Brauch, the dean of Regent Law School, which was founded in 1986 in Virginia Beach by Pat Robertson, the television evangelist. “And maybe there are eternal principles of justice that will tell us how to approach these questions.” …

[W]here mainstream law professors tend to ask questions about judges’ fidelity to precedent and the Constitution, Liberty professors often analyze decisions in terms of biblical principles.

“If our graduates wind up in the government,” Dr. Falwell said, “they’ll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they’ll be presiding under the Bible.”

Many of the dozen students who chatted with a reporter over two days at the school, representing a fifth of the school’s first and only class, said they were drawn to its emphasis on fundamental and enduring truths.

“We study the law that’s written on the heart, the things that no one can deny,” Brian Fraser said.