Tom Tancredo: The former Colorado congressman and anti-illegal immigrant activist has been a hero to the new Know-Nothings for years, but he’s kept a low profile since leaving office, emerging only a few times in ’09 to bash then-Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor, accusing her of being a racist and characterizing her membership in La Raza as being “nothing more than a… Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.” Anti-immigrant fervor has traditionally been a part of recession-era wingnut eruptions in years past, but it has not been a focus of Tea Party populist anger to date. It will be interesting to see what role Tom Tancredo plays among the Tea Party faithful—is he a third-rail throwback or a prodigal son turned Pied Piper? His reception will offer insights into the direction that the Tea Party movement may take in 2010.

Avlon is the author of lety book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America. His chapter on Glenn Beck was also excerpted at the Daily Beast.

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In the span of just 22 minutes, Schultheis tweets a lament for the lack of religious tolerance in Egypt, where Christians are discriminated against, and then tweets another lament, this time for the commitment in the United States to religious tolerance, which he apparently sees as a form of decadence.

Here’s the lead in the story Schultheis read at a Fox News site on the goings on in Egypt.

Maher El-Gowhary and his 15 year old daughter Dina never pray twice at the same church, never stay longer than a month in any one apartment. They are constantly under threat, always on the run because they converted to Christianity in a largely Muslim country.

Then he read the following and saw the move by the Air Force Academy as a bad thing:

Schultheis: Air Force druids?

“Every servicemember is charged with defending freedom for all Americans, and that includes freedom to practice our religion of choice or, for that matter, not to practice any faith at all,” said Chaplain (Lt. Col.) William Ziegler, Cadet Wing chaplain. “Being in the military isn’t just a job — it’s a calling. We all take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and that means we’ve all sworn to protect one another’s religious liberties. We all put on our uniforms the same way; we’re all Airmen first.”

[...]

The presence of diverse worship areas reflects a sea change from five years ago, when reports surfaced alleging religious intolerance at the Academy. Sergeant Longcrier became Pagan shortly after arriving at the Academy in 2006 and said he believes the climate has improved dramatically.

“When I first arrived here, Earth-centered cadets didn’t have anywhere to call home,” he said. “Now, they meet every Monday night, they get to go on retreats, and they have a stone circle. … We have representation on the Cadet Interfaith Council, and I even meet with the Chaplains at Peterson Air Force Base once a year to discuss religious climate.”

Earth-centered spirituality includes traditions such as Wicca, Druidism and several other religious paths that, while relatively new, trace their roots to pre-Christian Europe, Sergeant Longcrier said. Gerald Gardner founded the first Wiccan tradition in England in 1952, with neo-Druidism following in the early 1960s.

Some Earth-centered traditions involve the worship of gods and goddesses, whereas others may involve only one deity or none at all. Reincarnation is a popular concept, as is rebirth and celebrating the cycle of the seasons.

Famous outdoor worship circles include Stonehenge and Avebury in England and Native American sites such as the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming and Cahokia Henge in Illinois. A worship circle at Fort Hood, Texas, became a flashpoint for discussions about Paganism in the U.S. military after it was established by the Sacred Well Congregation in 1999.

The Fort Hood Open Circle was vandalized on four separate occasions from 1999 to 2000, including an incident Oct. 27, 2000, in which the half-ton limestone altar was destroyed outright. In response, a member of the Sacred Well Congregation wrote, “If we speak together, we are a chorus to be heard. If we whisper alone, we are but a sigh in the dead of night.”

Schultheis is introducing a bill this session– a Public Schools Religious Bill of Rights — that would allow for religious education in the public school curricula. It really matters to the Christian conservative lawmaker. He wants to see little Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Wicccan and Druid students, all learning their faiths side by side. Right Senator?

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Lutheran Medical Center

It’s the latest chapter in a long-running deal that is quietly altering health care here.

In October, the Exempla board voted to give the Sisters of Charity operational control of its Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Lafayette. Exempla’s Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver already operated according to Catholic principles.

Then in January, the Exempla board, under the direction of Sisters of Charity President and CEO William Murray, shook up executive leadership to smooth the transition. Five Exempla executives were fired, most of whom objected to the way the deal was moving to limit medical choices for patients.

The right to follow the ERDs

Jeanette DeMelo, spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Denver, told the Colorado Independent that hospital owners have the right to determine what services are offered and how care is delivered.

“The United States Constitution gives us that right, absolutely,” she said.

She acknowledged that not all Catholic hospitals in the country follow the Bishops’ directives to the letter but added that “if they call themselves a Catholic hospital, they are supposed to follow the[m]. Each hospital is responsible for the implementation of the [directives].”

The Church directives were approved and published in a fifth edition this past November. They are known as the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, or the ERDs.

DeMelo said bishops in each area work with hospitals to oversee implementation.

Spokespeople for Exempla and for the individual Exempla hospitals said the directives are followed at each of the hospitals.

“[Sisters of Charity] fully adheres to the ERDs. We are embarking on an ERD orientation program for Exempla hospitals, and once clinicians and staff have a full understanding of the ERDs, they will be implemented,” said Christine Woolsey, interim vice president for communications and marketing at Exempla.

She compared the ERD to a corporate philosophy or vision. “Both for-profit and non-profit health care has a guiding philosophy that shapes the kind of care it gives. The important element is respect for persons and being clear about the vision and values that shape the scope of care.”

She said the ERD is not a “compliance document but rather a set of guidelines.”

An ‘outrageous abuse of power’

Ed Kahn, special counsel to the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, told the Colorado Independent that the ERD represents an “outrageous abuse of power.”

“Medical decisions need to be made for medical reasons, based on the best current practices, not on religious or philosophical grounds,” he said.

He said the ERD forbids hospital staff from discussing contraception or abortion with patients, even in the case of rape victims, and notes that Exempla’s Lutheran Medical Center is the only hospital in Jefferson County.

“What if you are unconscious when you are taken to the hospital, or simply don’t know one hospital from another?” he asked.

“The ERD is a great infringement on the civil liberties of patients and their families. Hospitals, no matter who owns them, operate in the public interest and are supposed to serve the public health. If we allow this, what would stop another hospital from determining that all male babies should be circumcised? We would never stand for that,” Kahn said.

Kahn said he is hopeful legislation will be introduced this year that would force hospitals to honor end-of-life directives and would dictate that hospitals make medical decisions based on medical rather than religious or philosophical grounds.

State Senator Linda Newell, D-Littleton, said she does not know of any relevant legislation currently in the works and added that she doesn’t expect there to be any such legislation introduced this session.

“You have to respect that if this is their hospital, and that they have certain rights on how to run the hospital. On the other hand, you could have a patient not knowing they are going to a hospital that won’t honor their advance directive, and that isn’t right. You could have a rape victim taken to the hospital who won’t be advised of the choices that should be available to her, and that is very scary.”

Newell, vice-chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, also noted that some insurance plans limit people’s choice of hospitals and that in some cases people simply need to get to the closest hospital.

“It’s possible someone could die while trying to find another hospital,” she said.

Reading the directives

The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services makes it clear that care provided at Catholic hospitals should be infused with a sense of religious mission. The document is studded with terms such as “health care ministry” and “Catholic moral values.”

The ERD dictates that abortions will only be performed at Catholic hospitals in the event that the mother’s life is in imminent danger. It also says that no emergency contraception shall be offered to rape victims. Likewise, tubal ligations and vasectomies will not be performed.

Abortion is only one of numerous issues the ERD addresses. It says reproduction through any means other than sexual intercourse between a married man and woman is wrong.

“Reproductive technologies that substitute for the marriage act are not consistent with human dignity. Just as the marriage act is joined naturally to procreation, so procreation is joined naturally to the marriage act,” it says.

“The moral teachings that we profess here flow principally from the natural law, understood in the light of the revelation Christ has entrusted to His Church,” says the ERD.

These teachings come into play with regard to the treatment of those at the end of life, as well, when a dying patient’s wishes, even those put forth legally in a durable power of attorney or advance directive may be ignored if they conflict with Catholic values.

Quoting from the ERD, “The institution … will not honor an advance directive that is contrary to Catholic teaching.”

Catholic teaching shall also be provided to patients who are suffering and likely to die. “Patients experiencing suffering that cannot be alleviated should be helped to appreciate the Christian understanding of redemptive suffering,” the ERD instructs.

Health reform playing out on the ground

In addition to the three Exempla hospitals, Centura Health in partnership with Catholic Health Initiatives and the Adventist Health System, manage St. Anthony’s Hospitals in Denver and in Westminster. These hospitals also follow the ERD. These five hospitals account for approximately 39 percent of the hospital beds in the Denver metro area.

Centura Health and Adventist Health System operate Littleton Adventist Hospital and Porter Adventist Hospital, both of which are faith-based as well, bring the total number of religious hospital beds to just over half of all those in the metro area.

Local Adventist spokespeople didn’t respond to calls for comment, but nationally many Adventist hospitals perform at least some abortions and provide rape and incest victims with emergency contraceptives.

Susan Hebert, senior vice president of mission and ministry at Centura Health, wrote in an email that the Catholic hospitals within Centura also follow the ERDs. “These facilities and programs are committed to following (the ERDs),” she said.

According to Catholics for Choice, about 30 percent of Americans receive care at a Catholic facility in any given year, and about 20 percent of hospital beds nationally are in Catholic hospitals.

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Organizer Michael O’Fallon told CNN the cruise is a chance to “talk politics in paradise.”

“Right now people are wanting to be with other conservatives. Maybe they think they are on an island [already],” O’Fallon said.

Keyes told CNN that the Tea Party was gaining steam because it offers a new option. The whole party system is failing, he said.

Mary Beth Brown, an activist who is calling on the country to impeach the President was one of the featured cruise speakers: “I know all of us need some encouragement to fight this battle, against Obama, who is trying to destroy America. And I know all of you love America and are fellow patriots.”

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National Tea Party Convention organizer Judson Phillips (David Weigel)

But on the floor of his convention, the paranoid, mysterious Judson Phillips was nowhere to be seen. The real Phillips, a jovial defense attorney, bounded in and out of sessions, across the stage of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel’s Tennessee Ballroom, and from interview to interview. Hardly 15 minutes could go by without Phillips, sporting a rumpled tan suit and day-old shave, shaking the hand of a grateful attendee or being miked for a new interview.

“I’m talking to them,” he said, pointing at a video crew from Time magazine, and asking if he could wait a few minutes to answer questions. “Then I’m talking to them.” He pointed to CNN’s set-up box in the corner of the small convention hall. “Then I have another interview in a half hour. But I will talk to you!”

As this three-day event wrapped up with an hourlong address by and Q&A with Sarah Palin — broadcast live on CNN, Fox, MSNBC and C-Span — it was clear that Phillips’s massive and controversial gamble had mostly paid off. More than 200 members of the media had descended on Nashville to write probing stories on the Tea Party Movement. In the end, said Phillips, the convention would turn a small profit — a step down from his initial hopes to make enough of a profit to launch a 527 that would back conservative candidates, but when compared to the rumors that led up to the convention, a smashing success.

“We’re going to break even, maybe a little bit into the black,” Phillips said. And just as he did from the main stage, Phillips went a little further and ribbed his critics with a joke. “I’m not planning to declare bankruptcy. I had to do that one time–it really sucks when you have to do that.”

To the delight of attendees, the National Tea Party Convention became a coming-out party for a movement that’s always had an oppositional relationship to the press. It was a small event — around half the size of the inaugural YearlyKos convention of liberal bloggers in 2006 — and The Gaylord Opryland location served to make it look even smaller. The entire weekend was contained in a ballroom and three breakout rooms adjacent to a short lobby with media check-in on one end and a raft of cameras on the other, with pundits like The Daily Beast’s John Avlon and RedState’s Erick Erickson doing quick live bits. Getting to the convention floor meant walking through one of two indoor shopping malls, one of them inside a massive dome decked out with greenery and artificial lakes. “I imagined one day I’d meet [Palin],” said conservative media pioneer Andrew Breitbart in his introduction of the former governor. “I just never knew that it would be in the middle of Tennessee, in a biosphere. Or is it an international space station? Or is it the set of Avatar?”

Inside the main hall, and inside the breakout sessions, there was one member of the media for every three Tea Partiers. During the troubled run-up to the convention, those sessions (and Palin’s speech) were scheduled to be closed to the media, and only a few cloaked-in-mystery “availabilities” would be opened up.

“I think they were the dog that caught the car,” said Erickson, who had been an early critic of the convention. “They got Palin. Who thought they were going to get Palin? They didn’t know what to do next.”

In the final stretch, as coverage of the “intra-Tea Party infighting” reached fever pitch, Phillips put Memphis TEA Party founder Mark Skoda in charge of media outreach. (”I just didn’t want to deal with it,” Phillips told TWI.) It was Skoda, a bombastic radio host and consultant, who started keeping in touch and on top of media requests and letting the world in.

“I jumped in when all the negative press was coming,” Skoda said, “because I don’t have a lot of tolerance for people who want to be bullies. My focus was getting as much video press in here as possible, that show that we’re not a bunch of crazies, OK? So there was a necessity to look at international press. We wanted to give them access because this is truly American. Our president may not believe in American exceptionalism, but I do. And if you look at most of the U.S. press, there’s a national audience — there’s a lot of videography going on. My sense was: Nobody here is wearing crazy outfits, there’s no little pointy hats, no screaming mimis, no signs.”

Skoda’s calculation paid off. The few people in “crazy outfits” did draw cameras toward them as if they were magnetized. One was William Temple, a pastor who donned the revolutionary war garb and British accent he’d broken out at every Tea Party. During speeches, Temple would wave his hat and lead cheers of “Hip, hip, huzzah!” Outside of the main room, he was interviewed with every step he took. But Tea Partiers hardly had anything to fear from the quotable and polite man who co-starred in “Tea Party: The Documentary Film” and led the 9/12 march on Washington.

“Gone were the placards that protesters carried [at Tea Parties] last year with Mr. Obama’s face wearing a Hitler mustache or superimposed on the Joker,” wrote Kate Zernike in a New York Times piece representative of the convention coverage. Many questions to organizers were about the firey speech by former congressman Tom Tancredo that opened the convention; many questions to attendees were about Palin, and whether they’d back her if she ran for president. The controversy surrounding the convention and its speakers led to media coverage of the convention as a mainstream political event, a stop along the road to the rebuilding of the GOP. One sign of how happy Tea Partiers were to see the media there came after Anthony Reese, who’d left the organizing committee of the convention in a huff, staged a press conference with three other angry activists critical of what happened–and then asked Fox’s Carl Cameron for a photo together. Cameron obliged.

“I think the media convinced the media to cover this by playing up the early stories,” said Glenn Reynolds, the libertarian Instapundit blogger who drove to the convention from his home in Knoxville. He was conducting interviews for PajamasTV, the conservative web network that ran some of the earliest coverage of the Tea Party movement, and was allowed to livestream most of this convention. “If I wanted to give Judson Phillips more credit than he deserves, I’d claim he was actually a genius who manipulated the media into giving this more coverage. I mean, this was the front-page, headline story in the Knoxville paper yesterday!”

Continue reading at the Washington Independent, the Colorado Independent’s sister site in D.C.

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Bill sponsor Joe Mikloski, a Denver Democrat, aims to require Pinnacol to include a one-time injured worker and a physician on the directors board and to bring greater transparency to the board decision-making process by inviting the public to attend meetings.

The bill would increase the board from nine to eleven members and institute public comment periods at each of the meetings. Meeting agendas would also have to posted seven days in advance.

Pinnacol provides workers compensation insurance to nearly 60 percent of workers in Colorado.

“This is an effort to change the board of directors to reflect different perspectives, to make sure that key stake holders are heard on the board,” Miklosi said. “I think anybody who has power or influence should not be insulated, but that people should have the chance praise or to criticize [decisions].”

Englewood Democratic Rep. Daniel Kagan said the bill seemed to miss the point of board deliberations. The directors of a major operation such as Pinnacol, whether quasi-governmental or completely private, was to map out tactics to build success for the future. He said that the transparency provisions of the bill would create “public theater,” the benefits of which were unsure. Kagan ultimately voted to move the bill forward for larger debate.

Miklosi said they were going to have to agree to disagree. Those workers insured by Pinnacol are stakeholders and should have the opportunity to voice their opinions.

“I think that public comment is at the heart of democracy and process that allow a body to make policy.”

Bob Gardner, R- Colorado Springs, thought that the provisions would invite more than just stakeholders to the directors meetings.

“It is not just policy holders. It is not just clients. Anybody in the general public can just come and comment. That strikes me as unusual,” he said.

Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, reminded the committee that Pinnacol was not a privately owned company and that the stake holders were the citizens of Colorado.

“Pinnacol is a political subdivision of the state, [like] local government or like the University of Colorado… It is created by the state and it is owned by the state. It is not unreasonable to allow comment from the public.”

Gary Johnson, chair of the Pinnacol Assurance board, said doctors and one-time worker-patients had no place on the board. The board, he said, was obligated to concern itself with business priorities.

“By law, board members have a fiduciary responsibility to the company, not to any constituent group. A large insurance company needs more members with business experience. It would be a disservice to policy holders and injured workers if we restricted board eligibility.”

He pointed to the profitability Pinnacol has realized. He said serving shareholders was also the best way to serve the workers Pinnacol insured.

“Pinnacol has been working transparently for the best interests of the policyholder and shareholder since 2002.”

He said Pinnacol has grown its surplus from $215 million to $730 million in 2009 as a result of its management, which has also reduced rates to workers by 50 percent over the last five years and returned money to companies through a dividends program.

The legislation grew out of concern that Pinnacol might be denying legitimate claims for injury compensation.

Phil Hayes, a lobbyist for the AFL-CIO, said it was essential to balance perspectives on the Pinnacol board.

“We would like to see more transparency and adding more view points and public comment are good ideas that well be important.”

In the end the bill passed out of committee six votes to five.

Committee Chair Claire Levy, from Boulder, was the lone Democrat to vote no on the bill.

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“Men are having the toughest time finding work, so this is going to make it even harder for them to pay for insurance,” Swalm said. He later told the Colorado Independent that outside of the legislature, he worked as an insurance broker.

Rep. Spencer Swalm

Swalm energetically engaged committee members as well as people who cam to testify in favor of the bill, including Jerry McElroy, a spokesperson for national health care provider Kaiser Permanente. The only insurance company representative to speak at the hearing, McElroy said his company had decided to end gender discrimination costs in 1969 and that, contrary to the fears being expressed in the current debate, Kaiser had suffered no significant loss of revenue as a result.

“We’re doing just fine,” McElroy told the committee.

Swalm asked the committee to also consider ending age ratings for male teenage drivers, who pay higher car-insurance rates than female drivers. He said that was also an example of gender discrimination.

Division of Insurance Commissioner Marsy Morrison, one of 11 people to speak in favor of the bill, said the individual insurance market is expanding as layoffs continue and as the U.S. workforce moves away from company jobs. She said the bill would initially raise premiums for privately insured men if gender equality becomes mandated, but added that “the time has come to equalize the situation.

“The insurance companies have decided to stay out of this discussion, but I think they understand our changing society. The individual market is growing. When I came into the job as commissioner it was at 3.5 percent. Now it’s at 6 percent. It’s not a big market yet but I predict it will be a growing market, and we should be dealing with it.”

Women pay more for existing plans, even though none of the plans in Colorado include maternity coverage. An Anthem insurance personal plan in Colorado, for example, does not cover any maternity or prenatal care. Yet a women carrying the plan pays more than $120 more than a male under the same plan, even if the male is older. The woman simply pays more for being a woman as a category. As the Colorado Independent has reported, male smokers pay less than women nonsmokers.

Rep. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, joined Swalm in her concern for male insurance consumers.

Swalm voted against the bill. Roberts voted in favor of the bill, which passed eight votes to two.

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Education News Colorado reports:

Some district administrators fear the effective cut in school instructional budgets could be 10 to 12 percent in 2010-11, given that districts will face increased costs for things like pensions and health insurance at the same time state aid is cut.

So something will have to give, most likely class sizes, teacher jobs and teacher salaries.

The legislature recently passed, and Ritter signed a law, cutting $110 million of state school aid in the current budget year, about 2 percent. The state also isn’t compensating districts for higher-than-projected enrollment and numbers of at-risk students.

Democrats are proposing lifting tax exemptions on businesses to raise revenue. Republicans have fought the plan. Yesterday they announced a plan of their own that calls for no new revenue-generation but only for more cuts across the board. They asked Democrats to decide where the cuts should be made.

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You can’t give the people behind this plan even a single point for subtlety. You can, however, award lots of points for election-year foolery and comic passing of the buck. The Post story conjures images of Wiley Coyote hauling out one of his ridiculous oversize Road Runner-catching contraptions: We’re for cuts! That is, we’re for you making cuts and us later criticizing the cuts you make!

Here’s how Tim Hoover and Lynn Bartles wrap their story on the shenanigans going on under the Dome:

Let the governor make the cuts!

GOP declines specifics

Asked which departments they would cut, Republicans repeatedly declined to give specific examples, saying [Gov.] Ritter would have the authority to make those choices.

“Other states are making the same types of choices,” said [Senate Minority Leader and former gubernatorial candidate] Penry. “The Democrat governor of Massachusetts proposed laying off 2,000 state employees. Montana’s governor proposed a 5 percent across the-board cut in spending.”

Republicans, Penry said, were presenting an “alternative to increasing taxes on working women and men.”

Democrats said that was a cop-out.

“Just saying, ‘Let the governor do it,’ it’s the chicken way out,” said Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver. “He’s given us his budget proposal.”

Democrats also disputed Republicans’ estimated savings, saying that a 0.24 percent savings on payroll in the current fiscal year, which is 7/12ths over, would yield only $3.3 million.

Lobbyist Peg Ackerman, who has worked under the golden dome for almost 25 years, said she’s never seen a session like this one.

Ackerman said she understands much is at stake in November as the new governor and the 2011 legislative majority will play a major role in redistricting. But she said a decade ago, when redistricting was also in play, it wasn’t like that at the Capitol.

“It’s just a mean, ugly session with a total lack of civility,” she said.

The “plan” is already being picked apart for all its unserious unworkability by the wags at Colorado Pols.

It’s all so simple, really: “Cut the spending. Cut the taxes.”

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Former Congressman Tancredo explains why he came to speak on opening night.

Question: You came to the Tea Party Convention because they asked you?

Answer: Well, sure! I didn’t have $500 for a ticket! Only way I could get in this room was to be a speaker!

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