Amy Sullivan is a liberal writer/blogger/policy wonk who seems to have taken it upon herself to make John Kerry (and the Democrats generally) get some religion. She also is a former staffer for Tom Daschle, and she worked primarily on the partial-birth abortion issue during her tenure with Daschle in the mid-1990s. It is in that context that her recent piece in Commonweal, headlined "Kerry & Religion" sheds light on the relationship between Tom Daschle and his home diocese in South Dakota. Relevant excerpt from Sullivan's Commonweal piece:
For me, the prospect of a Kerry candidacy brought forth memories of lessons learned from working on abortion policy for a Catholic Democratic senator in the mid-1990s. My eighteen years of Baptist Sunday school were, unsurprisingly, no match for the bishop with whom I exchanged letters on behalf of the senator. With great conviction, I sought to assure the bishop that the senator formed his political judgments only after searching his conscience—I had never heard of the possibility of an “erroneous conscience.” As a good Baptist, I believed “the church” was the building where I attended worship services and potluck suppers, not an institutional authority with a doctrinal tradition that was not optional for adherents. The idea that a church leader could withhold the Eucharist from a parishioner because of political differences offended my religious sensibilities, making me outraged on the senator’s behalf.My efforts were, to say the least, not very effective. But my frustration led me to enter divinity school, where I spent several years thinking and writing about how church leaders can and should deal with religious matters in the political sphere and, yes, where I took several classes on Catholic social teaching in order to be better prepared for the next go-round.
It's interesting how circumspectly Sullivan discusses Daschle. She never mentions his name. Normally, it's rare to read a piece where Sullivan doesn't explicitly mention her experience as a staffer for Tom Daschle.
As veteran SDP readers know, I happened upon Sullivan's blog a few months ago and extracted some very interesting pieces of information, which I in turn posted to my blog.
In an intriguing turn of events, all of the links in my above-mentioned post to the interesting things Sullivan had to say on her blog about Daschle are now dead. If you click on the "March 2003-March 2004" archives link on Amy Sullivan's blog, that too is a dead link.
I noted this development of Sullivan attempting to erase the things she had written about Daschle in a post a few months ago. It turned out that I had jumped to conclusions at the time, and that her archives still existed, it just required an extra step of searching in order to find them. I apologized for this mistake, and regret making it.
Now, though, it actually is the case that the archives are gone, never to be seen again, unless Amy Sullivan gives the say-so. I noted that her archives had disappeared a few weeks ago, and sent an e-mail to her, dated June 8, informing her of this fact. To her credit, she responded the next day as follows:
Yeah, I know...thanks for reminding me. I've been a bit swamped and haven't had time to figure out what's going on. Hopefully soon. But I can't promise anything. Maybe if I had an intern I could assign them the project of figuring this out. Hmm.best,
amy
Given the circumspect nature of Sullivan's discussion of Tom Daschle in her Commonweal article, coupled with the disappearance of her blog archives, I think it's safe to say that Sullivan's archives will miraculously re-appear sometime around November 3. Hopefully, she'll prove me wrong.
UPDATE: Note too, that Sullivan has been semi-shunned by the Kerry campaign because of an interview she gave to the Washington Times about Kerry and religion. These Dems really want her to keep quiet.
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