If I had a webcam, I know what question I would submit to YouTube for the CNN/YouTube GOP Debate

Hat tip to DBB (who got it from Barefoot Bum) for the link to the video embedded below:



Notice the difference in how Mr. Stossel treats Nicole and her family and how he treats the pastors? Not exactly the model of journalistic objectivity. But that gets away from why I wanted to post the story.

I wish I could say that I'm surprised by Nicole's experiences, but if I did I would be lying through my teeth.

I lived in Oklahoma for seven years and two of my three best girlfriends grew up there, so I know that not everyone in that state is a small-minded hick. Still, having spent that much time in the land of Orel Roberts, I also know all too well that it is not a happy place for any atheist to be.

King Heathen has a nice response to the whole thing posted on YouTube.



Normally I wouldn't embed a random YouTube video, but this young man seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulders, and I think he makes some pretty good points, as an atheist living in the South, and I have to agree wholeheartedly with the depth of his disgust with the whole situation.

Setting aside for a moment the revulsion this story made me feel, it also stirred several memories and set me to looking back at my own experiences living in Oklahoma as an out-of-the-broomcloset Celtic Pagan. Not once in the seven years I lived there was I made to feel unwelcome because of my faith. Admittedly, most of my time was spent either in the company of IT guys or on the campus of a major University, but no matter where I was, whether I was inside or outside of that comfort zone, my faith - on those occasions when it was relevant enough to be discussed - was never treated as a negative.

After class one day, I got into a theological discussion with a fellow student, who also happened to be a Southern Baptist Youth Pastor. After about an hour of friendly questions and answers, he told me he wished his students thought about their beliefs as much as I'd clearly thought about mine. On another occasion, I ended up chatting with a repairman who had come out in the middle of the night to fix our electricity; he was a Jehovah's Witness, and we ended up having a bonding moment about the shared experience of always having to explain "what I really believe" as opposed to "what the media says I believe." Finally, during the year I spent working - in between University and law school - I got into a conversation with my assistant manager in which my religion came up. I commented on her reaction - a positive one - and she replied, "Well, honey, this is Oklahoma; we don't care so much what you believe as long as you believe something."

I don't know if her comment really is reflective of Oklahoma as a whole, but it did stick with me, and I've wondered about it many times since then.

Would the reception I received have been that different if I would have been an Atheist instead of a Celtic Pagan?

Is there something about Oklahoma history that embeds in its culture a demand that you acknowledge some higher power, even if it's multiple higher powers?

Or was my experience just a result of the fact that I was living in one of Oklahoma's few metropolitan centers? Would the people of Hardesty have responded to me and my family with the same hostility that they showed Nicole and her parents?

If I'm perfectly honest with myself, I have to admit that there are places in this country where people would look down their nose at me on account of my faith. I also have to acknowledge that if the Religious Right base in the GOP had its way, the percentage who would reject me and any other members of minority faiths would increase.

And that brings me to the question I would ask the GOP candidates, if I had a webcam:

Sirs, I am a Celtic Pagan, a member of a faith that is very much in the minority in this country. President George W. Bush once said that he did not believe that Wicca - another type of Paganism - was a real religion, his father once said that it was impossible to be an Atheist and a good citizen, and I have heard more members of the GOP than I can even begin to count referring to this as a Christian nation. So, I ask you all, what would you say to those patriotic citizens who are members of a minority religion or who have no faith at all? How are we to feel welcome in this country we love so dearly when we are accused by our leaders of not being proper Americans?

Some questions will just never be answered

Jill over at Feministe has a few questions up for the anti-choice crowd.

They're good questions, springing naturally from the rhetoric and rationales most commonly used by anti-choice individuals and organizations.

Here's the money quote:

One goal of the anti-choice movement is to outlaw abortion. But, as Anna Quindlen points out, anti-choice activists are almost never able to identify what the legal consequences should be for women who terminate their pregnancies. So, pro-lifers, tell me: What should the penalty be? How much time in jail should a woman face for abortion?

The logic behind the question, of course, is that the anti-choice movement has always justified itself through resort to the notion that an embryo is a person and that, therefore, abortion is murder. Okay, Jill says, if abortion is in fact murder, why don't you think women should go to jail for having an abortion? You'd jail a woman who hired a hit-man to kill her husband, so why not jail a woman who hires a doctor to terminate a pregnancy?

It's an interesting post, and some of the comments are intriguing, but no one seems to have really tried to answer the question.

To be honest, I don't really expect to ever see an anti-choice person deal with the question in a frank and honest way.

That would suck

Recent victims of the New York Bar Exam are now dealing with yet another source of potentially insanity inducing stress.

Apparently, the essay answers of a percentage of those taking the Bar online may have been lost due to a series of computer glitches.

Sheesh, and I thought I had it bad last year when the TSA and baggage handlers got together and broke my typewriter (accidentally, I presume) so I had to write my essays by hand.

A dose of common sense wouldn't go astray

I was reading Pandagon earlier tonight when I ran across the news that the TSA has become rather alarmed by a series of incidents, which they have identified as potential pre-probing incident to a potential future attack. Now, the TSA and other subdivisions of the DHS absolutely need to keep their eyes out for probing as it does often presage an attack, but I think the TSA may need a little help in the common sense department when it comes to what qualifies as a probe.

One of the more frustrating incidents recounted in the report (pdf file) occurred on 4 June 2007, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when "[t]he carry-on baggage of a USPER contained several items resembling IED components, such as a wire coil wrapped around a possible initiator, an electrical switch, batteries, three tubes, and two blocks of cheese." Cheese! As to the rest, on skimming the rest of the report, I note that someone's cell phone re-charger was also identified as a potential bomb component. Which brings us back to the cheese. Cheese in the Milwaukee airport. Blocks of cheese in the luggage of someone flying out of the main airport in America's Dairyland.

Unless cheese has the same x-ray profile as C4 or other explosive materials (and I know the former EOD guy who reads this blog will clarify that issue for me), I'm going to have to admit to being less than impressed.

This I do not believe

A few days ago, Rod Dreher started something when he created a list over on Beliefnet of things he believed before the war that he no longer believes because of it.

This is his list:

1. Having been absolutely certain that the war was the right thing to have done, and that we would prevail easily, I am no longer confident that I can discern when emotion is affecting my judgment unduly.

2. I no longer implicitly trust governmental institutions, including the military -- neither in their honesty nor their competence.

3. I no longer believe the Republican Party is superior in foreign policy judgment to the Democrats.

4. I no longer have confidence in the ability of our military, or any military, to solve deep cultural and civilizational problems through force alone. I mean, I thought nothing could stand in the way of the strongest military fielded since the days of ancient Rome. No more.

5. I have a far greater appreciation for how rare and fragile liberal democracy is, and a corresponding revulsion at the American assumption that it's the natural state of mankind. Which is to say, the war has made me rethink my ideas about human nature, and I'm far more pessimistic now than I ever was.

Under the list, he invited others to create their own, and a number of bloggers, generally conservatives, have either taken him up on his invitation or commented on his observations (or on those of his respondents).

As I have always made clear, I am not a conservative of any stripe. I have not, therefore, suffered quite the level of disillusionment that Mr. Dreher and his compatriots have endured. That being given, I cannot say that this war has not robbed me of some of my more dearly held illusions. My list of the things I no longer believe because of the war follows:

1. I no longer believe that on those occasions when I do not agree with the course of action chosen by a Presidential Administration, I can take comfort in the fact that the Administration is acting from the conviction that it is doing what is best for the country. Admittedly, it was more than a little naïve for me to believe that, but I somehow managed for three decades to preserve my idealism well enough to honestly believe that even Reagan, who I disagreed vehemently with, always had the best interests of the United States at heart. I will never again assume that any President is so motivated.
2. I no longer believe that there is a line beyond which a President cannot go without Congress snapping him back firmly. This was a deep article of faith throughout my childhood and young adult life, a faith that had been bolstered by Watergate and Iran-Contra, where Administrations were brought to heel when they crossed or tread too close to the line.
3. I no longer believe that the military will hold fast to the most critical strategic lesson of the Vietnam War: let not political goals and concerns impact strategic or tactical decisions. As a member of a military family, and as the daughter of Vietnam Era veterans (including one combat vet), this makes me saddest of all.
4. I no longer believe that the average American citizen gives a damn about soldiers, sailors, airmen, or marines. I've seen too many people strut about after doing nothing more than slap a magnet on the back of their vehicle.
5. I no longer believe that gridlock (having the legislative and executive branches split between the two parties) is always unhealthy.

So, are there any beliefs that the war has stripped from you?

From the mouths of babes

This afternoon, I was watching some video on my laptop, during which some of Mr. O'Reilly's comments about the Daily Kos were played. My daughter was sitting next to me, folding laundry (her new chore now that I've taken over the dishes), and when she heard the comments, she exclaimed, "Wait a minute! Of course the Pope is a primate. All humans are primates, and Popes are humans, aren't they?"

I need to stop thinking that I am beyond being shocked

The video embedded below is the opening statement of testimony recently provided by Rory Mayberry, a former subcontractor employee for First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting Company, to the House Oversight Committee hearing on "Allegations of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse at the New U.S. Embassy in Iraq.



Back when I was in law school, my core area of concentration was Labor & Employment Law, so the information contained in this video is more than a little appalling to me. The worst part for me, however, isn't individual violations of OSHA standards and other relevant federal laws.

(To be honest, I have little real familiarity with the intricacies of U.S. government contracting laws and regulations, so I don't know if a contractor working in what is, arguably, not U.S. sovereign territory is obligated to abide by federal employment laws and regulations. )

As I said, though, it isn't the potential violation of individual laws that bothers me. What shocked and appalled me was the account of the Filipino workers who were essentially kidnapped and coerced into working on the Embassy construction. That goes beyond violation of individual law; that is an insult to and abrogation of the core principal upon which all employment law rests - freedom of contract.

Now we can sit and argue all day about whether freedom of contract truly exist or the power inequities inherent in the employment relationship make it a mere illusion (and I've seen law students do exactly that), but what is beyond argument is that the notion of freedom of contract - that an employer is free to hire whom he will and that the employee is free to take what jobs he will - lies at the core of every statute, every regulation, and every bit of case law in the Employment Law realm. It is the theoretical sine qua non of the discipline.

Thumb your nose at freedom of contract and you have no more business calling yourself an employer than someone who thumbed his nose as supply and demand would have calling himself a free market participant.

I'm going to go hunting on the C-SPAN website later today to see if I can find video for the entire hearing; hopefully it won't get any worse.

ETA: I am aware that there are likely Human Rights Law violations here, but I would like to see if I can hunt up some expert opinion on that front before I even think about commenting on it myself.

Just a little reminder on the Presidential power front

The limits of Presidential power have always posed something of a quandary for policy-makers and Constitutional scholars alike, as cases of Presidential overreach come before the Court relatively infrequently. That being said, there are some useful precedents, and there is some law in this are that is considered well-settled. For example, Justice Jackson's concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), has long been considered the key distillation of Presidential Powers jurisprudence.

In light of recent events, I think it would be useful to remind ourselves of the pertinent language.

Presidential powers are not fixed but fluctuate, depending upon their disjunction or conjunction with those of Congress. We may well begin by a somewhat over-simplified grouping of practical situations in which a President may doubt, or others may challenge, his powers, and by distinguishing roughly the legal consequences of this factor of relativity.

1. When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate. In these circumstances, and in these only, may he be said (for what it may be worth) to personify the federal sovereignty. If his act is held unconstitutional under these circumstances, it usually means that the Federal Government as an undivided whole lacks power. A seizure executed by the President pursuant to an Act of Congress would be supported by the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation, and the burden of pursuasion would rest heavily upon any who might attack it.

2. When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures of independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.

3. When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter. Courts can sustain exclusive presidential control in such cases only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.

Hate to break it to you, but . . .

A couple of days ago, Bill O'Reilly was talking about the DailyKOS in his Talking Points Memo, when he cited a couple of examples of what he described as the site's "hate." Among the things cited was a comment that "the Pope is a primate."

Oooookay.

Now, I'm not a KOS reader. I skimmed through it a few times, and ended up rejecting it for the same reason that I rejected the message boards on World Net Daily. Civility is in very short supply on both outlets, and while I love a good political debate, my cardinal rule is that civility and mutual respect of each other's dignity is the sine qua non of any meaningful discourse.

I do not, therefore, have any particular problem with individuals discussing the poisonous nature of some internet debates, though Mr. O'Reilly's single-minded focus on liberal sites makes his protestations impossible to take seriously. Then we come back to what he cited as an example of "hate."

"The Pope is a primate."

Now, Mr. O'Reilly, not surprisingly, fails to provide the context in which the comment was made. As a bare statement, however, I have a difficult time taking it seriously as an example of "hate" for the simple fact that it is true. The Pope is a primate. When last I checked (and I don't believe Catholic dogma on this point has changed all that much since I was in Catholic school), the Pope is still a member of species Homo sapiens, and that species is in fact a sort of primate. So, yes, the Pope is a primate. So am I. So, for that matter, is Mr. O'Reilly.

Now, I would understand a little better if a fundamentalist Christian were insulted at having one of their religious leaders called a primate. After all, most of the fundamentalist strains I've run into tend to subscribe to Biblical literalism and, thus, tend to reject evolution in favor of the 6,000 (or so) year old Earth. For someone like that, being called a primate would be deeply insulting.

But Mr. O'Reilly is not a fundamentalist Christian. He has identified himself as a Catholic, and as such, he should be aware that the Vatican has declared that there is no contradiction between Genesis and evolution. It should, therefore, not be the least bit troubling for Mr. O'Reilly to hear that any particular member of species Homo sapiens is a primate.

Of course, that's just me being reasonable and logical, and I should know better.

Hey look, Armagh's head went sploedy

I read Andrew Sullivan's blog fairly frequently, even though I disagree with him on a number of issues (e.g., climate change) because he is a conservative who thinks about his positions, who is willing to change them if evidence so demands, and who makes a real effort to keep the discourse civil (sometimes he slips, but you can tell he's trying). Also, he's a great source for links to some of the more wacky wingnuttery.

Of course, following those links can sometimes be hazardous to your health. For example, a couple of days ago, Mr. Sullivan posted a link to this little gem that Dean Barnett posted on Hugh Hewitt's blog over at Townhall. (That should have been my warning that this was not going to go well.)

This was my second warning:

This morning, 150 miles north of Baghdad in the Kurdish city of Kirkuk, 2 suicide bombers killed scores of people. While tragic, this is militarily beside the point of the surge. The surge's purpose is to pacify Baghdad and its surrounding areas so the Maliki government can become strong enough to bring a bit of civilization to Iraq. (emphasis added)

Now the bolded section isn't quite as disastrous a word choice as was President Bush's use of the word "crusade," but it's still pretty darn unfortunate, and thank all that's good and holy that most Iraqis are unlikely to hear Mr. Barnett's assessment that they need some civilization. Unquestionably, Iraq is currently in a very bad way, but it was not always so. This is the region that housed the Fertile Crescent, the birthplace of Western Civilization (the creche may have been in Greece and Rome, but the natal site was the Fertile Crescent). This is also the region that, during the Medieval period, was vastly more civilized than Europe. These are facts that the average Iraqi is all too well aware of, so they're not going to respond to well if anyone decides to tell them they need civilizing. (The "winning hearts and minds" component is, as a general rule, not well served by insulting people.)

But that's not even the part that stopped me in my tracks. Here's the money quote:

What America needs, and what the Iraqis need, is a government that has its heart in the right place but won’t mind ignoring certain “niceties” when necessary. Think of a leader like Andrew Jackson. Or, more likely, someone like Augusto Pinochet, whose ruthlessness has obscured for history the free market reforms he imposed that saved Chile and the democracy he bequeathed to his previously misbegotten country. (emphasis added)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard that right, Augusto Pinochet.

This is the point at which my head explodes.

Someone tell me that I'm not the only one to spot the irony in the notion of overthrowing Saddam Hussein so that we can replace him with someone just as brutal. Thank the gods that the Administration hasn't voiced a similar sentiment . . . yet.

Could you repeat that again please? I don't think I heard you properly.

Everyone has heard the old saw about truth being stranger than fiction, and most people have - at least once - responded to something in the news with "if a screenwriter tried to pitch that, no one would buy it." Well, today was one of those days for me.

Apparently, the city of Basra in Iraq has been dealing with a bit of a problem with honey badgers, nocturnal carnivores who are indigenous to the region. Because the badgers were first spotted near the British military installation in Basra, rumors have begun flying that they were released by the British, presumably in some sort of effort to harass the local population. Despite statements by the British military that they "can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" the locals are not reassured.

Really, it's the quote that gets me. There's an inherent absurdity to it that makes one almost expect to see the Cheshire Cat grinning down from the nearest tree.

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan's blog for the link.

Sometimes I can't wait to get old, just so I can have a cane to thwap deserving people with

Seriously.

And I know I'm not the only person to ever entertain that thought.

Things like this, for example, are a perfect illustration of the fact that some people are in need of a serious thwack across the shins.

For the link-phobic, here's a brief summary. A Catholic school in Australia is refusing to admit a young boy because his surname "jarred with its religious teachings."

The kid's surname? Hell. Yep, that's right. Apparently, this is a surname of Austrian extraction, and according to the child's father, the school refused to admit his son unless the boy changed his surname by, for example, taking his mother's name.

Now, as I may have mentioned previously, I attended Catholic schools for twelve years, so my "WTF?!" bar is pretty high where they're concerned, having come to accept and expect a certain amount of silliness. I do have to admit, however, that this one is ridiculous enough for even my jaw to drop.

Something has to be offensive before it gets me "pissed off"

Andrew Sullivan posted a bit of video from a Bob Hope movie in which Mr. Hope makes fun of Democrats by comparing them to zombies. Now, according to Mr. Sullivan, this was done to "piss off" his liberal readers. Well, if he was being honest with regard to his goal, I have to say that his aim is more than a little bit off.

I have no idea how most Democrats would react to that bit of video, but this lifelong liberal Democrat found it more than a little chortle-worthy, and why shouldn't we laugh?

Of course, there is a difference between gentle humor, like Bob Hope's, and mean-spirited barbs, and it is certainly understandable when someone reacts to cruelty with anger. However, it is both immature and more than a little ridiculous to take offense at a more friendly jab.

It is the ability to laugh at yourself, to appreciate a certain amount of ribbing about your flaws (and everyone has them) that is the highest form of humor. It is that which keeps us honest and prevents us from getting too arrogant or too complacent in our perceived righteousness.

Then again, I'm an attorney who thinks good lawyer jokes are absolutely hysterical, so what do I know.

Further Proof that the Universe Has a Wicked Sense of Irony

President George W. Bush and the Dalai Lama share a birthday, though not a birth year.

If a clinic is bombed and no one reports it, does it make a sound?

A month or two ago I posted a few thoughts about violence committed against abortion providers, wondering why such acts were not classed as terrorism, as an analysis of the most commonly used definition suggests they ought to be. Since then, I've spent a fair amount of time wondering at the fact that more Americans aren't as concerned as am I about the phenomenon of clinic violence. The standard answers, which generally lean on notions that "most" Americans are actually anti-choice really don't come close to providing a sufficient explanation.

To begin with, I tend to doubt the contention that the majority of Americans really are anti-choice. Granted, my opinion here is primarily driven by anecdotal evidence, but my base of friends is variegated enough in terms of education, politics, and socio-cultural background that I think I've at least got a shot of having a representative sample. What that experience has shown me is that, while many Americans - maybe even the majority - are extremely uncomfortable with abortion, at least in certain circumstances, they are also extremely uncomfortable with making that decision for someone else. Additionally, if my experience is any guide, even among those who believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances (a very small group, if my experience is any indicator), the majority are utterly horrified at the idea of killing a doctor, bombing a clinic, or harassing staff members or their children.

Given that, then, why on earth is there no outcry over the continuing campaign of terror being waged against abortion providers and other family planning outlets?

The common feminist explanation is that no one particularly cares because this is a problem that primarily impacts women. While this rationale sometimes seems reasonable to me, I ultimately cannot subscribe to it. In part, this is because I am still - despite everything - something of an idealist, and I am not ready to accept that our society has become so infected with latent misogyny that terrorism is acceptable when visited upon the lesser sex. Secondly, and perhaps more convincingly, the perpetrators of these crimes have also targeted the children of abortion providers and of clinic workers, and if there is one thing that we, as a nation, are more than willing to get up in arms about, it's someone's children being targeted in this way. True, we do not seem to value all children equally, but there is still a collective gut wrench that hits whenever news of a child being victimized hits the airwaves.

So, what explains the curious apathy?

At the end of the day, there really is only one explanation. Put simply, people don't care because they don't know. Granted, the various feminist communities (both online and IRL) have done an incredible job spreading the news of these events to attentive women throughout the nation, but - and this is critical - they have not been able to get the MSM to take the events seriously or give them the press attention that they deserve. I cannot even begin to imagine why that is (well, I can imagine, but I don't have any real evidence to support my suppositions at this point), but I think the case can easily be made that this silence has, in a very real way, contributed to the continuing viability and vibrancy of anti-choice groups who increasingly resort to violence.

Fortunately, there are mainstream news outlets who do pay real attention to the issue; the only problem is that you have to cross The Pond (literally or virtually) to find them. And even the BBC hasn't done any real tracking of the problem in nearly a decade (at least not that I've been able to find).

So, we're left with a problem with no obvious solutions. Groups like NOW and NARAL certainly have PR specialists on their payroll, and if they haven't been able to figure out how to bring more awareness to the issue, I (with my complete lack of training in media) am certainly not going to be able to. Nonetheless, something needs to be done, and frankly I'm not sure what that something is outside of raising my voice here as often as I can on the issue.

Guess what, it's not the sun

British scientists today pounded another nail in the coffin of the notion that global warming is caused by solar variation. According to a study conducted by Mike Lockwood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Claus Frolich of the World Radiation Centre, who analyzed global temperature and solar output data from the last 100 years, solar output is actually doing the precise opposite of what it would need to be doing in order to be taken seriously as a cause of global warming. Recent solar activity peaked between 1985 and 1987 and has been declining ever since.

Of course, I don't expect this study to change the minds of any of the hardcore denialists of anthropogenic climate change, but one can hope that this might set off a light bulb or two for those few fence sitters who are still capable of persuasion via hard data.

Yeah, one can hope. But, if I'm to be perfectly frank, I don't think there are all that many reasonable and rational folks left amongst the ranks of the denialists. The data already accumulated is too strong and has done such a good job in disproving other potential causes that I have difficulty countenancing the notion that those who are continuing to engage in denialism are doing anything more than engaging in willful blindness.

That, or they really just haven't looked at the data.

Note to MSNBC

Southern Kansas is not in the Midwest; it's in the Great Plains.

Now, I know this is confusing for y'all out on the coast, but those of us who live in flyover country would really appreciate it if you would take the time and effort necessary to come to grips with the fact that there are distinct regions between the two coasts that can be pretty clearly delineated in terms of geography, demography, and culture.