This has quietly become one of the biggest non-issues of this campagin for no good reason. Let’s make this very clear: there is NO secret plan to reinstate the military draft. The Bush administration is not secretly assembling all the pieces, waiting for after the election to ship off your sons, brothers, and husbands (and presumably daughters, sisters, and wives) to Iraq (or Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, North Korea).

This whole thing got started when Rep. Charlie Rangel proposed legislation that would have reinstated the draft. He introduced this bill in an effort to create a backlash agaisnt the war in Iraq. He thought that the prospect of a draft would be enough to frighten us all into giving up on the war effort. The Senate version of the bill is here. Both of these bills were introduced by Democrats, both of whom are against the war in Iraq. Neither bill is being pushed in either house of Congress.

At the same time, it was reported that the Pentagon was trying to fill vacant seats on draft boards across the country. Well, that’s partly true. It’s actually the Selective Service and not the Pentagon that has been trying to fill those vacant seats. But they’ve been trying to fill these unpaid, volunteer seats for several years now. It’s nothing new since the Iraq war or since 9/11. The real truth is that many of the previous members of these boards were forced to step down because of a 20-year term limit. In 1979 the current board system was established, so it makes sense that in 1999, a large number of the original members had to step down.

Further, any reports that the Selective Service budget is growing in the coming fiscal years is also totally false. In fact, the budget is staying flat at $26 million, and the department is making marginal reductions in its personnel.

Go read this for further explanation about why this whole story is being blow out of proportion.

The fact that CBS News even ran this story, basing it largely on speculation, emotion, and debunked e-mail messages is pretty reprehensible. Both candidates have come out and said that they oppose a draft. Every defense official in this administration that’s been asked about a draft have opposed it. There’s no need for one, but it’s a great scare tactic to frighten those swing voters into voting for John Kerry.

A really great article over at NPR about the fact that the so-called debates are nothing of the sort. Connie Rice lists the 10 secrets “they” don’t want “us” to know about the debates.

Rather than reproduce the article here, I’ll just hit a couple of the main points. The biggest problem with presidential debates for the last 20 years is that they aren’t independent in any sense of the word. They are controlled by a coporation, funded by big business interests, and run by RNC and DNC operatives. They’ve become a lot like the party conventions — carefully choreographed showcases of the candidates rather than true debates of substantive issues that affect voters. Each campaign can stipulate too many special provisions, and in the end, it’s nothing more than each candidate giving carefully rehearsed responses to hand-picked moderators.

The only way to make this actually work would be to return control of the debates to some independent group like the League of Women Voters. In fact I think it would be great to have a few different non-profit, non-partisan groups sponsor different debdates. They would invite the candidates of their choice. Campaigns wouldn’t be able to dictate the rules. Imagine how different the 2000 debates would have been if Bush and Gore had been joined by Buchanan and Nader. So many people claimed that Nader cost Gore the election in 2000, but voters never got to hear Gore and Nader debate the issues on the same stage.

The debate tonight will still be revealing and important for both candidates, but I doubt much will actually be debated.

I’m not surprised that this request is being made now. I am surprised that it hasn’t been made for years. Paul and Jan Crouch have been off the reservation for over a decade now, with few people calling them on their behavior. Hank Hanegraff at the Christian Research Institute has been one. The Trinity Foundation, Inc., who publish The Door magazine is another.

But now Wall Watchers is making a public call for Paul and Jan Crouch to step down and to re-tool TBN:

Wall Watchers, a North Carolina group that monitors the finances of more than 500 Christian nonprofits, proposed the series of reforms in response to recent stories in The Times that detailed the Crouches’ luxury lifestyle…

Wall Watchers officials recommended that TBN revamp its board of directors, which consists of Jan and Paul Crouch and his sister, Ruth Brown, to be independent of the Crouch family. The group also proposed that the network stop relying on the “prosperity gospel” — a religious principle that donors will receive financial rewards from God by giving money to TBN — for fundraising.

Of course, the article also says that TBN rejected these ideas, but is willing to provide financial information to Wall Watchers. If nothing else, the TBN board needs to be re-structured. There are a number of qualified religious broadcasters, Christian leaders, and executives that I would love to see on that board. How about Jim Wallis from Sojourners? Or Wayne Pederson from Moody Broadcasting? Or Ravi Zacharias? Or Hank Hanegraff?

It’s obvious that TBN is coming under much more scrutiny these days, so I don’t think it’ll be a huge surprise if Paul and Jan step down and turn things over to their son Paul, Jr. That might not be a terrible thing, since Paul, Jr., seems to be working hard to distance the network from scandal. Maybe he’ll take this thing in the right direction.

I missed this late last week, but apparently Jan Crouch is in the hospital:

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sept. 24, 2004–TBN officials confirmed that Mrs. Jan Crouch, wife of Pastor Paul Crouch, founder of Trinity Broadcasting Network, has been admitted to an undisclosed California hospital, after being taken to the emergency room for severe abdominal pain.

Mrs. Crouch has been diagnosed with acute pancreatitis and gall stones. There is no word on how long she will be in the hospital.

Jan Crouch is well known for her humanitarian relief efforts and work with children on the island of Haiti.

Paul Crouch , Jr., eldest son of the Crouches, requested prayer for his mother on TBN.

I think this quote from Doug Brinkley in the NY Times sums up the problems the Kerry campaign is facing right now:

“Every American now knows that there’s something really screwy about George Bush and the National Guard, and they know that John Kerry was not the war hero we thought he was,” said Douglas Brinkley, the historian and author of a friendly biography of Mr. Kerry’s war years, acknowledging that Mr. Kerry’s opponents had succeeded in raising questions about his service.

The difference between Bush and Kerry on this is that Kerry has made his Viet Nam War service a cornerstone campaign issue. The whole “reporting for duty” nonsense just served to underscore this. Bush, on the other side, has never made a big deal about this National Guard service. Kerry likes us to think that he’s in the same league as John McCain. Hardly.

I reallly want to move away from this TBN story, but I just can’t. It keeps getting better and better.

Let’s review what we already know.

Enoch Lonnie Ford is a former TBN employee who reached a settlement with the network in 1998 for $425,000 over a wrongful termination claim.

Part of that settlement provided that Ford could not discuss the details of the case. In the time since, Ford confronted Paul Crouch and asked the network’s founder to pay him millions of dollars for the rights to a manuscript Ford had written.

In that manuscript, Ford describes a sexual encounter he had with Crouch at a TBN-owned cabin in 1996. Crouch denies the allegations, and TBN is pursuing legal actions to silence Ford.

Here are some interesting things to note. First, Paul and Jan Crouch receive salaries from TBN that total over $750,000, including benefits and perks that include a private jet and numerous homes around the country. The network brings in nearly $120 million each year in donations.

TBN denies that the money spent to settle with Ford was ministry money. However, TBN is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, so there’s no way to honestly analyze their books. Further, TBN is being represented by Colby May, who is described in TBN press releases as either a lawyer or spokesperson. May is also a senior attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice, headed by Jay Sekulow and founded by Pat Rogertson.

It’s now being reported that, if nothing else, Ford’s relationship with TBN included having his personal debt paid off, with ministry dollars:

Ford also claimed Crouch told him the ministry would pay off about $17,000 of his debts. Ford believes Crouch was trying to pay him off. Ministry officials confirmed that the ministry paid at least some of his debts.

Talk about a smoking gun. I can understand if TBN gave Ford, a recovering drug addict, a job because they wanted to help him out. Crouch may have even befriended the man when they met in 1991. It looks really suspicious to fire him from the network, then settle with him for $425,000 when he claims wrongful termination. I guess you could explain that as being a PR move to keep the name of TBN out of the mud and avoid a protracted legal battle.

But to confirm that TBN paid off this guy’s personal debts just sounds like a complete admission that Crouch and Ford had a personal, sexual relationship.

I don’t know how it can get much worse than this, but I’m sure it will.

As I was standing in a restaurant Friday night talking with my dad about the TBN / Paul Crouch debacle, I realized something that needs to be talked about more.

In TBN’s press release from last week that I also posted here, their lawyer Colby May stated that the money paid to Crouch’s accuser in a legal settlement did not come from ministry funds. Here’s the problem with that — there’s no way to know that for sure. The reason why is because TBN is the only religious broadcaster that I know of that isn’t a part of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). ECFA is a group that was founded in the wake of the televangelist scandals of the 1980s to hold ministries accountable for how they handle their funds. Almost every reputable ministry you can think of is a member. There is a pretty rigorous standard enforced on members that requires complete disclosure of financial records for review and some pretty solid guidelines for fundraising and the way funds are handled.

ECFA does a great job keeping ministries accountable and provides donors with a “seal of approval” when they send their money to one of the member ministries. TBN’s abscence from this group speaks volumes. In fact, none of the TBN regulars — including Benny Hinn — have been willing to submit themselves to ECFA’s scrutiny.

Now, there are plenty of ministries that are not members of ECFA. Each surely has its own reasons. But TBN really has no excuse. They handle a LOT of donations. How much?

TBN collects more than $120 million a year from viewers of its Christian programming — more than any other TV ministry. Those donations have fueled its rise from a rented studio in Santa Ana to a global broadcasting system whose programs appear on thousands of channels — via satellite, cable and over-the-air broadcasts — in a dozen languages.

The network’s donors also help fund generous salaries for Crouch ($403,700 a year) and his wife, Jan ($361,000), and an array of perks, including a TBN-owned jet and 30 homes across the country, among them a pair of Newport Beach mansions and a ranch in Texas.

When your ministry rakes in $120 million a year, you need to open your books and tell people where that money is going. If these benefits are any indication, it won’t be pretty.

UPDATE: More financial data about TBN:

Paul, 70, collects a $403,700 salary as TBN’s chairman and president. Jan, 67, is paid $361,000 as vice president and director of programming. Those are the highest salaries paid by any of the 12 major religious nonprofits whose finances are tracked by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

TBN’s “prayer partners” pay for a variety of perquisites as well.

The Crouches travel the world in a $7.2-million, 19-seat Canadair Turbojet owned by TBN. They drive luxury cars. They have charged expensive dinners and furniture to TBN credit cards.

Thirty ministry-owned homes are at their disposal — including a pair of Newport Beach mansions, a mountain retreat near Lake Arrowhead and a ranch in Texas.

The Crouches’ family members share in the benefits. Their oldest son, Paul Jr., earns $90,800 a year as TBN’s vice president for administration. Another son, Matthew, has received $32 million from the network since 1999 to produce Christian-themed movies such as “The Omega Code.”

Overseeing these expenditures is a board of directors that consists of Paul Crouch, Jan Crouch and Paul’s 74-year-old sister, Ruth Brown. Control resides primarily with Paul. In a 2001 legal deposition, Jan said she did not know she was a corporate officer and could not recall the last board meeting she attended.

TBN’s declared mission as a tax-exempt Christian charity is to produce and broadcast television shows and movies “for the purpose of spreading the Gospel to the world.”

Supporters’ tax-deductible donations fund the ministry’s worldwide television network — and keep it growing. Expansion is an overriding goal. Televised appeals seek money for new transmitters, more satellite time and fresh cable deals to bring God’s word to an ever-larger audience.

As more people hear the Crouches’ message, more are inspired to send donations. That pays for further expansion, which brings more viewers — and more donations.

The formula has proved extraordinarily successful. While other religious broadcasters have struggled, TBN has posted surpluses averaging nearly $60 million a year since 1997. Its balance sheet for 2002, the most recent available, lists net assets of $583 million, including $238 million in Treasury bonds and other government securities and $31 million in cash. It has 400 employees across the country.

The TBN scandal story won’t go away, mostly because TBN keeps issuing statements. Here’s the latest:

(AgapePress) - Officials with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) say they now regret reaching a financial agreement with a former employee seven years ago who threatened to go public with scandalous allegations against the network’s founder.

Forty-one-year-old Lonnie Ford claims that in late 1996 he had a sexual encounter with TBN founder Paul Crouch. Ford was hired by TBN in the early 1990s after meeting Crouch at a ministry-affiliated drug treatment center in Texas. Although Ford had a number of run-ins with the law, TBN repeatedly took him back. However, after Ford was not re-hired after serving a drug-related jail term in 1998, he threatened to sue for wrongful termination and sexual harassment.

TBN attorney Colby May says the network reached a $425,000 settlement with Ford, who agreed not to discuss his claim about the alleged sexual encounter with Crouch at a TBN-owned cabin near Lake Arrowhead, California. May says the allegations are false and that Ford has broken the terms of his settlement by attempting to publish a book detailing the alleged encounter.

Gee, they REGRET paying this guy off? You think? A couple of interesting observations about this whole situation …

First, the lawyer representing TBN is a guy named Colby May. I’m presuming this is the same Colby May who is a senior attornet at the American Center for Law and Justice. You can read his bio here. This is the organization that Pat Robertson founded back in 1990 to wage legal battles against the ACLU and other groups that oppose the pro-family agenda. The public face of the group today is Jay Sekulow, who hosts a daily radio program and appears on a number of mainstream media outlets. ACLJ has done some great work in the past, even though some of their cases seem more quixotic than anything else. Now, it’s not uncommon for all these religious broadcasters to have strange connections to each other. Pat Robertson remains the godfather of religious television broadcasting, but he’s distanced himself from TBN. For an ACLJ attorney to represent Paul Crouch on what seems like a largely personal matter, I think there needs to be more explanation. I can see if May is representing TBN on corporate issues — like FCC compliance — but this seems a little unusual.

Further, the press release linked above concludes with this statement, “May points out that ministry funds were never used in any portion of the settlement.” This is a really difficult statement to make, since we know that there’s a real gray area in these kinds of ministries. TBN pays both Paul and Jan Crouch six-figure salaries, that certainly don’t represent the bulk of their compensation. I’m sure there are all kinds of other benefits, including housing, that we never hear about. I don’t think it would be a stretch to believe that there’s a TBN legal slush fund that exists to clean up messes like this. Which leads to another set of questions: Why didn’t Crouch come clean about this earlier? Are there others who have been paid off?

More to come on this …

It’s been a very interesting two weeks since the close of the GOP convention. Bush definitely got a bounce from the convention — about 5 percent — but now that bounce has turned into a spike in a lot of places. Taking a look at some key states:

Ohio: Bush 52% Kerry 40%
Pennsylvania: Bush 46% Kerry 42%
Florida: Bush 51% Kerry 45%
Missouri: Bush 55% Kerry 41%
Wisconsin: Bush 52% Kerry 44%

Some nice leads in some important states. Kerry is still leading in Michigan by about 5 points and in New Hampshire by the same margin. He also has slight leads in Iowa, Oregon, Washington and Minnesota.

The big shockers to me are these polls:

New Jersey: Bush 49% Kerry 45%
New York: Kerry 49% Bush 42%
Illinois: Kerry 49% Bush 45%

The fact that Bush is even making it a race in Illinois is amazing. Consider that Alan Keyes’ campaign is seeing his poll numbers sink beneath 40% against Obama. The Illinois GOP is in shambles, but Bush is polling well here. Might we see Illinois flip red on November 2?

New Jersey is a complete shock, as is the tightening race in New York. Bush might take NJ but I don’t have much confidence in NY yet.

The electoral projections look like this:

Election Projection: Bush 285 Kerry 253
Electoral-Vote.com: Bush 311 Kerry 223

With less than 50 days left until the election, Kerry really needs to shake off the taint of the Swift Boat Vets and CBS Memogate. It’s sucking the oxygen out of his campaign. He didn’t perform as well at the DNC as he needed to, so his bounce didn’t materialize. In the meantime, the GOP convention hit all the right buttons, and Bush is enjoying a nice lead. If Kerry is going to win this, he needs to focus on finding a message, especially one that pertains to national security and defense.

The debates could change everything, but if Bush’s performance in 2000 is any indication, then Kerry will be in for a fight.

If there already weren’t enough reasons to get involved in Sudan, now comes this story being reported by a German newspaper:

Berlin, Germany, Sep. 15 (UPI) — Syrian special forces used chemical weapons in June to kill dozens of people in Darfur, Sudan, the German newspaper Die Welt reported.

The attack came after an arrangement between Syria and the Sudanese government, Die Welt said, citing Western secret service documents and eyewitnesses as quoted in the Arab media.

Syrian officers met with Sudanese army authorities in a Khartoum, Sudan, suburb in May to discuss possible military interaction. The Syrian officers proposed cooperating on chemical weapons development.

The situation at TBN has gotten bad enough to issue a press release. This must be bad. Let’s see what they are saying:

(Tustin,CA)—In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times reporting a story that Dr. Paul Crouch, the founder and president of Trinity Broadcasting Network, was allegedly involved in a wrongful termination and sexual harassment case in 1997 is deplorable and the scandalous claims leveled against him are false.

The accuser is a convicted felon and longtime drug abuser who has been imprisoned for years for serious crimes ranging from child sexual molestation to using illegal drugs such as crack cocaine. The accuser became involved with TBN through a drug rehabilitation program conducted on TBN’s property. Upon his successful completion of the program, TBN gave him a chance by offering him employment.

Although the accuser fell back into drug abuse on more than one occasion during his employment, TBN extended grace to this man and kept him employed while he continued to seek rehabilitation and counseling. Finally, after being arrested for yet another drug related violation, he was found guilty of violating his probation and was returned to prison for a year. Upon his release from incarceration in 1997, he again sought employment with TBN and when TBN declined, he threatened to sue TBN by alleging wrongful termination and sexual harassment, directing his most salacious allegations towards Dr. Crouch personally.

Hmmm … sounds more like an attack against the character of the accuser than the charges themselves. Basically, because the accuser was a drug addict and a felon, then he shouldn’t be believed. There’s more:

In an effort to address this matter in 1997, Dr. Crouch sought the advice and counsel of some trusted advisers, attorneys and spiritual leaders. The consensus viewpoint was that it would be better for TBN and Dr. Crouch to reach a financial settlement rather than to fight the accuser in court. This course of action was deemed less expensive and would avoid the bad publicity, time and effort that it would take to fight the false claims. Dr. Crouch reluctantly agreed to this advice with the understanding that the accuser would go away and leave both he and TBN alone forever. The importance of the settlement does not rest on the money paid, but rather on Dr. Crouch’s vehement denial of the allegations made against him as well as the agreement of the accuser to keep confidential and refrain from repeating his false claims and accusations. Most importantly, at no time were ministry funds used in any portion of this settlement.

What kind of advisors are telling you to pay off the accuser rather than stand up and refute the charges? Maybe, they are the kind of advisors that know the accusations are true and would hurt TBN. Maybe these are advisors with a financial stake in TBN’s future success.

It goes on, but I think it’s becoming clear that Crouch has messed this up pretty badly. If the charges being made against him are TRUE, then he’s lying and trying to pay off his accuser to shut him up. If the charges are FALSE, then why did he try to cover this up for so long and spend $425,000 of his supporters’ money to pay off a blackmailer? Seems like a pretty poor use of the money.

How cool is this? For a mere $7 million, you could own your own town:

Rudy Nielsen has dealt with some unique properties in his 40 years of selling ranches and vacation homes around British Columbia, but he has never tackled anything quite like this before.

Mr. Nielsen is selling an entire town, Kitsault, B.C., to be exact, and the asking price is $7-million. For that price, the buyer gets not only 92 houses perched on a mountain’s edge in a tranquil ocean inlet, nestled in a dense evergreen forest and surrounded by coastal mountain vistas, but also:

Seven apartment buildings, containing 210 suites;

One fully equipped hospital, with a never-used X-ray machine;

Two recreation centres, complete with a swimming pool, gym, hot tub, racquetball courts, library, theatre, curling rink and Maple Leaf pub;

A brand-new shopping mall that includes facilities for a liquor store, bank, post office and several specialty stores;

More than 80 hectares of wilderness, including roughly one kilometre of beach.

There has to be a cult out there looking for some new digs. Seriously, though, it would pretty amazing to start your own community with all the infrastructure already in place, even though it is Canada.

Via Metafilter.