Last week several commenters criticized my post on Mitt Romney’s “Muslims in the cabinet” comments. Romney’s apparent gaffe quickly faded from the headlines, but Romney’s recent speech on his idea of the role of religion in politics might be a good opportunity to briefly revisit my earlier post, and take a look at some issues with Romney’s attitude to religion in politics that come from directly from Romney’s statements “on the record.”

First, on the previous post. In hindsight, I regret not taking seriously the people other than Mansoor Ijaz who say they heard Romney say he would rule out people of Muslim faith from his cabinet. At the time I wrote the post, there were two witnesses saying that; by the following day there were three. All three individuals work for one libertarian magazine based in Nevada, which does pose a concern (that is to say, it’s possible they’re part of a right-wing anti-Romney movement).

That said, four witnesses (including Mansoor Ijaz, who in my view is not very credible) is enough: Romney probably did say (at least once, possibly twice) “Not likely” when asked whether he would have Muslims in his presumptive cabinet. The biggest problem with that statement, of course, is that it’s discriminatory. And those of us who aren’t Muslims should be equally concerned: if he’s not having any Muslims in his cabinet, he’s probably not having any Hindus or Sikhs or Jains either.

Another unfortunate aspect of Romney’s statement is that it reveals his seeming lack of awareness of people from a Muslim background who might in fact be qualified for certain cabinet posts. One such person is the Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN — one of the few high-level Bush political appointments that hasn’t been a total flop.

In the end, I do not think the Romney “Muslims” gaffe is a significant political event, partly because it seems no one caught it on video, which means Romney has “plausible deniability” (damn you, deniability!). Pressed on the question by the media, Romney finesses it, and argues that what he meant was that he wouldn’t have Muslims in his cabinet just to placate critics of America in the Muslim world. That explanation works just fine with the mainstream media.

Still, Romney’s recent speech on religion probably isn’t going to win him many Muslim friends:

“I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life’s blessings. (link)

Muslims have “Frequent prayers” — that’s the best he could come up with? Oy, vey. (I think Jews might also be a bit troubled that his praise of Judaism is for its ancientness, a quality which has sometimes been invoked by anti-Semites. It’s also untrue that the religion is unchanged; ever hear of Reform or Conservative Judaism? But I digress.)

Of course, what’s really wrong with Romney’s speech, beyond that absurd paragraph, is the way he completely flip flops on secularism. Continue reading →

The Washington Post has a rather odd profile of Congressman Dennis Kucinich and his wife, Elizabeth. It’s essentially an account of how a 61 year old midwestern Congressman with political views considerably left of the American mainstream (and, yes, a history of spotting UFOs) got together with a 30 year old British woman who, in the reporter’s words, “looks like Botticelli’s Venus, only with clothes on.”

It’s a bit weird that people are paying all this attention to Elizabeth Kucinich’s looks, rather than her husband’s political views. The WaPo piece acknowledges the oddity of the hype (including the bit that ran on The Daily Show a few weeks ago), but in some ways this piece adds to it instead of moving past it.

The style of the writing does get on my nerves at times:

He says: It was an ordinary day in May 2005. There he was, Dennis Kucinich, congressman, twice divorced, looking for love, as always. He was on the floor of the House, doing ordinary congressman things.

“Tell her about the morning,” Elizabeth says helpfully.

“Ooh! That’s right!” Kucinich says. Here’s the amazing part. (Things involving Elizabeth generally tend to be amazing.) That very morning, believe it or not, guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who teaches peace through meditation and rhythmic breathing, had come to town. Dennis and Ravi have known each other for a long time. Ravi asked about Dennis’s love life. Dennis said he was still looking for that special someone.

“And his response was, ‘Stop looking and then she will appear,'” Dennis says. “And I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to stop looking.’ I said that. And that afternoon — “

“I walked through the office door,” Elizabeth finishes. (link)

On the one hand, this reads like political coverage as filtered through Danielle Steel (“looking for love… and doing ordinary congressman things” ?! Is this the same Washington Post E.J. Dionne writes for?).

On the other hand, if the Kuciniches really do say stuff like this in public, it’s a bit hard to truly feel sorry for them.

There’s more India a bit further on: Continue reading →

Forget Oprah — Kal Penn is going to go out on the campaign trail for Barack Obama, starting with events in Iowa this weekend. He has a statement about it up at his Myspace page:

I first met with Senator Obama last month during a campaign stop in Los Angeles. I was pleasantly surprised: so many of his plans echo the sentiments of folks I’d met all over the country – from my conservative buddies to the liberal ones. Simply put, Senator Obama transcends the party line on issues from the environment, health care, and national security, to business, education, and diplomacy. I believe he’s someone we can all be proud of to lead our country and represent us abroad. (link)

Penn gets more specific on ethnic/Desi issues here:

Many of us have parents, cousins, or friends who immigrated from different parts of the world in search of a better life. Some of them came here under something called the H1B visa program, which right now leaves too many loopholes that shady employers can take advantage of. Senator Obama is committed to reforming this system, so that qualified, hard-working immigrants can contribute to society, free from any sense of vulnerability or danger of abuse by employers. He is also committed to strengthening our borders by removing incentives for people to enter the United States illegally. (link)

An interesting statement. From my point of view, the biggest problem with the H1B system is the confusion it creates for workers — it is a work visa, but many people think of it as an immigration visa. And people who are sponsored for Green Cards by their employers have to wait as long as 6-12 years to have their status adjusted. Some H1B workers find themselves stuck with employers for years while the USCIS sits on their applications. My biggest gripe is with the inefficiency of the USCIS, but Kal Penn is right that many H1B workers are exploited by employers, as they are often unable to change jobs for fear that their Green Card applications will be canceled.

Though I haven’t made up my mind yet, I would be strongly tempted to support any candidate who pledges to reform this part of the immigration system, not just “illegal immigration.”

Though I’ve heard that Obama has supported expanding the H1B quota temporarily, I’m not familiar with the details of his plans to reform the system overall. Does anyone know of specific positions he’s taken regarding H1Bs, or other immigration issues that tend to affect Desis especially?

UPDATE: Thanks to DizzyDesi, we have a direct quote from Obama on this exact issue after the jump: Continue reading →

Earlier this week, a Pakistani-American businessman named Mansoor Ijaz published an article in the Christian Science Monitor, entitled, a “A Muslim Belongs in the Cabinet.” I heard about it via Josh Marshall and TPM.

The surprising revelation in the piece related to how Mitt Romney had answered a question from Ijaz about having a Muslim in Romney’s would-be Cabinet:

I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that “jihadism” is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, “…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”

Romney, whose Mormon faith has become the subject of heated debate in Republican caucuses, wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit instead. Yet he seems to accept excluding Muslims because of their religion, claiming they’re too much of a minority for a post in high-level policymaking. More ironic, that Islamic heritage is what qualifies them to best engage America’s Arab and Muslim communities and to help deter Islamist threats.(link)

At first, I thought this was pretty troubling. While obviously you wouldn’t put someone of a particular religious background in your cabinet as a token, you also wouldn’t exclude someone from a high position because of their religious background, would you?

But — when questioned about it, Romney described the question differently: “His question was, did I NEED to have a Muslim in my cabinet to confront radical Jihad, and would it be important to have a Muslim in my cabinet. And I said no…” (full quote here; or, see it on YouTube)

If you put aside the bluster about taking on “Radical Jihad” (all the Republicans seem to talk this way), Romney’s explanation of his interpretation of the question and subsequent answer actually isn’t very controversial.

Moreover, once you start to look a bit more closely at Mansoor Ijaz, what you find is a lot of sketchiness. Continue reading →