Daily French Roast

Anne is reading …

Photo-illustration by Gluekit (Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images (Obama); Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images (Romney))Slime isn’t our favorite breakfast food, especially when drinking fair trade French Roast, but it’s the toast with Anne’s morning jo, reading New York Magazine’s The Coming Tsunami of Slime: How Super-PACS, vulnerable candidates, and armies of mercenaries will converge to create the ugliest campaign ever.

“How are we going to punch him every fucking day in the face with the best fucking message that is going to drive voters in our favor?” he asks. The face in question is that of President Barack Obama. “How do we do it nationally? How do we do it in the states? How do we do it over and over and over? We’re not going to win the fight with a knockout punch; we’re going to win it with kidney blows that make your opponent so feeble that he can no longer raise his hands to cover his face.”

If mostly men have been at war in America’s just-say-no Congress, our citizens have another 10 months of extra-ultra ugliness to prepare for, writes Joe Hagan. With more money rolling in this campaign than ever before — thanks to the Supreme Court’s overturn of ‘Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission’ — corporate, union and rich people’s super-PACs are “effectively mini-campaigns, employing more pollsters, more researchers, and more ad-makers for the purpose of going negative against the opposition—every fucking day.”

We’ve already heard the line countless times in the last week. A super-PAC smears blood all over an opposition candidate, and the Republican says “Not my decision; I have nothing to do with these people.”

Aung San Suu Kyi Interview

Aung San Suu Kyi . Photograph by Frederic de la Mure/AFP/Getty Images.Lally Weymouth interviews Burma’s Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for Slate. Released from her house arrest of six years, the woman who leads Burma’s reform movement now welcomes high-level foreign guests, most recently US Secy of State Hillary Clinton.

Asked if President Thein Sein’s reform process is real, the petite warrior for the people answers affirmatively, but adds a caveat. The president has limited powers, and the military can take over at any time. The real question is whether or not Myanmar’s military powers support reform.

Asked whether she is likely to run for president in the 2015 elections, Aung San Suu Kyi replies: “I don’t want to be president, but I want to be free to decide whether or not I want to be President of this country.”

We have reregistered our party. I went to register myself as a candidate this morning. We have started campaigning around the country. People have been very enthusiastic. It is very encouraging—all these years and they are still standing solidly behind us.

The interview closes with a personal tribute back to Desmond Tutu, who expressed his lavish appreciation of Aung San Suu Kyi on Charlie Rose, in a September 2011 interview during the Clinton Global Summit.

I am a great admirer of Desmond Tutu. I like quoting his words that he believes in reformative rather than retributive justice. I think he means it and I mean it, too. I don’t like putting even animals in cages. I would hope that people should be treated with dignity whatever they have done.

As for Hillary Clinton, Myramar’s opposition leader says: ” Yes, she is very nice and very intelligent. I like intelligent people.” Read entire in-depth interview at Slate

Newt and World’s Rules

Writing for the Daily Beast, Marianne Gingrich’s divorce attorney Victoria Toensing, writes that when Newt Gingrich gets power, he believes the rules don’t apply to him. Read why she believes it’s true that Newt Gingrich believes:

People want to hear what I have to say. It doesn’t matter what I do.

More DFR

Associated Press - Birth control is displayed at manufacturing plant.The Obama Administration refused to grant church-affiliated organizations a pass on the mandate requiring church-affiliated organizations to offer their workers coverage of birth control as part of their health plans. But the administration did grant them an additional year to comply, writes the Washington Post.

The decision almost caught pro-women organizations off guard, given the Obama administration’s history of mixed signals on supporting women’s rights. Organizations including The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals lobbied ferociously for a broad exemption for any organization opposing birth control on religious grounds. Based on the Republican party’s frontal attack on women’s rights, most women’s groups assumed Obama would again cave.

The delay was no consolation to Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” he said. “The Obama administration has now drawn an unprecedented line in the sand.”

AOC’s Own Line in the Sand

Anne previously drew her own line in the sand on this same topic. Read her Drawing a Line in Lubna’s Sand, Saying ‘No More’ to the Growing, Global Erosion of Women’s Rights in the Name of Any Man’s Religion.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Rick Santorum writes: My Fight for Life. In terms of the upcoming election, Santorum states that as president he will appoint only ‘originalist’ judges who believe that life begins at conception. Not only is this the argument behind the personhood amendment, but also legislation that passed in Utah but was vetoed by the governor making miscarriage a felony.

Posted on our new Anne of Carversville Facebook page, Dov Linzer, an Orthodox rabbi who is the dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, weighs in on both the women’s modesty issue and controlling women’s bodies.

We’ve been following the explosive loss of women’s rights in Israel, most recently with eight-year-old Naama Margolese living in Jerusalem’s Beit Shemesh neighborhood, being vilified and called a whore for not dressing modestly enough for school. Note, that Naama was in fact dressed very modestly, just not modestly enough for these ultra-Orthodox men.

Dov Linzer writes the question that is at the core of Anne of Carversville: “Is it possible for a religious demand for modesty to be about anything other than men controlling women’s bodies? From recent events in Israel, it would certainly seem that it is not.”

Read more about the problems women are facing in Israel in Nation | Israel.

Investigation of American Nuns

No one suggests that the investigation of American nuns is over, but it’s noteworthy that on Jan. 4, Cardinal Franc Rode resigned as head of the Vatican’s ‘cabinet office’, the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life, that deals with religious orders, including nuns worldwide.

Writing for Huffington Post, American nun Maureen Fiedler says that Cardinal Franc Rode is an arch-conservative with an archaic view of religious life that resonates with the 18th century, rather than the 21st.

When the Vatican announced its ‘investigation’ of all active orders of US nuns in 2009, a ‘doctrinal investigation’ of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the organization representing the collective leadership of about 90 percent to 95 percent of all nuns in the United States, was also on the list.

These investigations came out of the clear blue sky, without any allegations of wrongdoing that usually prompt official probes. And they brought howls of protest from nuns themselves and many in the laity. Typical was the comment of a friend of mine: “Now … let me get this straight. Some priests committed sex abuse. Bishops covered it up. And so they’re investigating nuns?” The investigation of nuns has nothing to do with sex abuse, of course, but that scandal led some to ask if this is an attempt to deflect attention away from the sex abuse debacle.

Simply stated, the vast majority of American nuns refused to comply with the investigation, including returning their surveys.