The current finance crisis has shown us that many emperors do not have any clothes. Many institutions cannot sustain themselves out of current funds.
Bobbing amid all the economic wreckage, I find Republican politicians hilarious these days. I cannot listen to them decrying big federal deficits with a straight face.
The federal government has lead the way into debt for well over two and half centuries – with major growth spurts in the Lincoln Administration to finance the War Between the States, and in the Wilson Administration to finance our involvement in the Great War, and in the Roosevelt Administration to finance our involvement in the Second World War.
The Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford administrations all had big public debts. The Reagan administration increased public debt at an astronomical level, as did Bush II administration on an even grander scale of red ink.
So when Republicans decry the Obama administration’s public debt ratios and rattle off scare stories about saddling our grandchildren and great grand children with hideous and unmanageable debt – my response is simple:
things should not be any different now than they have been in the past.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
2009: ORWELL AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
It was George Orwell who said in Politics and the English Language that is English is a corrupt language. This is a nice way of saying that English provides us a system for expressing evil intentions and carrying out evil orders. The next step in this assumption is that people who speak English become corrupt by speaking English: we cannot any one of us escape that problem.
We see this principle at work in the Obama Administration. Remember, during the campaign Barack Obama decried torturing as an established federal policy, creating Guantanamo, and holding people without trial forever because they are too dangerous to try in public
--- and because the evidence the government collected against them they gained through torture and is not, strictly speaking, factual.
The Obama Administration recently has become increasingly vague in their definitions of torture and terrorists. It becomes increasingly wishy-washy about when and if it will close Guantanamo, mostly on the assumption that the place is too complicated to close. It now talks about "preventative detention," which means throwing people in jail forever without trial because the leaders speculate they might do something those in power do not want.
The Obama Administration wants for itself some of the power the Bush administration exercised against terrorists, but it fails to understand that once one picks up one end of a rhetorical stick, one has to pick up the entire stick.
THE CALL TO ACTION
The American public must take time out from its frivolous schedule to write protests to its representatives in Congress and to the heads of the Justice Department. Guantanamo must be closed. Our military should not torture our enemies. Our police, for that matter, should not torture its citizens, either. Everyone deserves the due process of trial by jury.
We see this principle at work in the Obama Administration. Remember, during the campaign Barack Obama decried torturing as an established federal policy, creating Guantanamo, and holding people without trial forever because they are too dangerous to try in public
--- and because the evidence the government collected against them they gained through torture and is not, strictly speaking, factual.
The Obama Administration recently has become increasingly vague in their definitions of torture and terrorists. It becomes increasingly wishy-washy about when and if it will close Guantanamo, mostly on the assumption that the place is too complicated to close. It now talks about "preventative detention," which means throwing people in jail forever without trial because the leaders speculate they might do something those in power do not want.
The Obama Administration wants for itself some of the power the Bush administration exercised against terrorists, but it fails to understand that once one picks up one end of a rhetorical stick, one has to pick up the entire stick.
THE CALL TO ACTION
The American public must take time out from its frivolous schedule to write protests to its representatives in Congress and to the heads of the Justice Department. Guantanamo must be closed. Our military should not torture our enemies. Our police, for that matter, should not torture its citizens, either. Everyone deserves the due process of trial by jury.
ORWELL WAS RIGHT: POLITICS IS THE DEFENSE OF THE INDEFENSIBLE
ITEM CULLED FROM THE HEADLINES
Cheney defends Bush's national security policies
Preserved from Yahoo! News
AP
electronic scrapbook entry for 21 May 2009
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday defended the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation methods and said the questioning led to information that deterred terrorist attacks.
In a speech delivered immediately after President Barack Obama's defense of his moves to end the severe techniques, close the Guantanamo jail and release secret documents, Cheney said the national security decisions made by former President George W. Bush kept America safe.
Cheney said the Bush-era stance was rooted in a determination to ensure the Sept. 11 attacks didn't become "a prelude to something worse."
Cheney claimed that tough interrogations "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people." Cheney challenged Obama to release secret documents that he contends would prove this case.
Cheney said that al-Qaida's failure to pull off another attack inside the United States over the past 7 1/2 years proves that the Bush strategy worked and should continue.
Bush-era policies ranging from harsh interrogation tactics to widened surveillance, Cheney said, were intended to prevent attacks similar in scale to the plane hijackings of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.
"To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaida terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again," Cheney said.
Despite his own criticisms, Cheney said that the public debate about interrogation practices and the Obama administration's legal framework for prosecuting terrorists is dangerous because he said it encourages terrorists to attack the United States.
"They see weakness and opportunity," Cheney said. "The terrorists see just what they were hoping for — our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted."
The former vice president bristled over the complaints about interrogation from lawmakers, pointing out that leading members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., were briefed on the programs and methods.
"Yet for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative," Cheney said. "In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists."
Speaking to an audience at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Cheney said, "only detainees of the highest intelligence value were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation. You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists."
Pelosi has said the CIA misled her in 2002 about whether waterboarding, which simulates drowning, had been used.
Cheney delayed the start of his address until after Obama finished his speech.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
RIGHT ASCENSION CAN HARDLY CONTAIN ITSELF
Our former vice president Cheney must believe that we have the native intelligence of toasters to actually believe anything that he says these days on any subject other than, say, fly fishing on Wyoming rivers.
The terrorist acts in question did not happen and so we do not know how many people would have died in them if they actually had happened. Cheney is speculating, if not just outright lying. We should not confuse speculating with what the scientists refer to as factual evidence. That is bodies piled up in the streets.
If Cheney wants us to believe a word he says, then he must reveal the factual evidence for us to judge.
He has not.
He will not.
Therefore, the evidence does not exist.
One of the big mysteries to me – aside from why he, Bush and Rumsfeld have not been exiled to St. Helena or Pitcarin – is why Cheney is defending the Bush administration’s indefensible acts. The almanac says that Bush was President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. Bush should do the defending in public.
WHO EXACTLY DOES CONGRESS THINK IT IS KIDDING?
It is also pretty silly for our politicians to say that the suspects at Guantanamo are too dangerous to put in American prisons. The criminals in our prisons are the World’s most expert, most hardened, most deadly bad guys on earth. I doubt that anything the supposed terrorists have to say to them by way of persuasion will make much of a dent in our criminals. And how many of these supposed terrorists speak English anyway? I suspect our prisoners will teach them a thing or two.
Cheney defends Bush's national security policies
Preserved from Yahoo! News
AP
electronic scrapbook entry for 21 May 2009
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday defended the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation methods and said the questioning led to information that deterred terrorist attacks.
In a speech delivered immediately after President Barack Obama's defense of his moves to end the severe techniques, close the Guantanamo jail and release secret documents, Cheney said the national security decisions made by former President George W. Bush kept America safe.
Cheney said the Bush-era stance was rooted in a determination to ensure the Sept. 11 attacks didn't become "a prelude to something worse."
Cheney claimed that tough interrogations "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people." Cheney challenged Obama to release secret documents that he contends would prove this case.
Cheney said that al-Qaida's failure to pull off another attack inside the United States over the past 7 1/2 years proves that the Bush strategy worked and should continue.
Bush-era policies ranging from harsh interrogation tactics to widened surveillance, Cheney said, were intended to prevent attacks similar in scale to the plane hijackings of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.
"To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaida terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again," Cheney said.
Despite his own criticisms, Cheney said that the public debate about interrogation practices and the Obama administration's legal framework for prosecuting terrorists is dangerous because he said it encourages terrorists to attack the United States.
"They see weakness and opportunity," Cheney said. "The terrorists see just what they were hoping for — our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted."
The former vice president bristled over the complaints about interrogation from lawmakers, pointing out that leading members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., were briefed on the programs and methods.
"Yet for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative," Cheney said. "In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists."
Speaking to an audience at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Cheney said, "only detainees of the highest intelligence value were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation. You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists."
Pelosi has said the CIA misled her in 2002 about whether waterboarding, which simulates drowning, had been used.
Cheney delayed the start of his address until after Obama finished his speech.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
RIGHT ASCENSION CAN HARDLY CONTAIN ITSELF
Our former vice president Cheney must believe that we have the native intelligence of toasters to actually believe anything that he says these days on any subject other than, say, fly fishing on Wyoming rivers.
The terrorist acts in question did not happen and so we do not know how many people would have died in them if they actually had happened. Cheney is speculating, if not just outright lying. We should not confuse speculating with what the scientists refer to as factual evidence. That is bodies piled up in the streets.
If Cheney wants us to believe a word he says, then he must reveal the factual evidence for us to judge.
He has not.
He will not.
Therefore, the evidence does not exist.
One of the big mysteries to me – aside from why he, Bush and Rumsfeld have not been exiled to St. Helena or Pitcarin – is why Cheney is defending the Bush administration’s indefensible acts. The almanac says that Bush was President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. Bush should do the defending in public.
WHO EXACTLY DOES CONGRESS THINK IT IS KIDDING?
It is also pretty silly for our politicians to say that the suspects at Guantanamo are too dangerous to put in American prisons. The criminals in our prisons are the World’s most expert, most hardened, most deadly bad guys on earth. I doubt that anything the supposed terrorists have to say to them by way of persuasion will make much of a dent in our criminals. And how many of these supposed terrorists speak English anyway? I suspect our prisoners will teach them a thing or two.
Friday, May 15, 2009
PRESIDENT OBAMA WILL NOMINATE WHO?!? TO AMBASSADOR OF CHINA
AP source:
Obama to name Utah governor envoy to China
Yahoo! News
AP
15 May 2009 9:00 p.m. MDT
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK – A source close to Utah's Governor Jon Huntsman says President Barack Obama plans to name the Republican governor as ambassador to China.
The source says Huntsman has accepted the appointment.
An announcement was expected at the White House Saturday morning.
The 49-year old Huntsman is a Mormon who liberalized Utah's restrictive liquor laws and has nudged the state in a more moderate direction on the environment and gay rights.
Huntsman has been mentioned as a potential 2012 presidential contender. He served as ambassador to Singapore under President George W. Bush. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and has an adopted daughter from China.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
RIGHTASCENSION ASSUMES THE AIR OF SOPHISTICATED BEMUSEMENT
Jon Huntsman is rich, he speaks Mandarian, he has experience in China, he has ambassadorial experience in Asia. President Obama's idea is a brilliant one --- especially since it gets one of Obama's rivals for the 2012 election out of the way and in his employee in far off Beijing.
Huntsman, we hear, wants to be president, and so to that end, it is better for his future political career to go to Beijing -- which is not swimming in red ink and which still has power to spare -- than to hang around in Washington and Salt Lake City where he will find himself embroiled in all kinds of local unpleasantness in the next three years.
From 1895 to 2002, no Utah governor died in office or resigned. All the governors' terms stood neatly in a row in increments of 4 or 8 or 12 years. Now -- Utah will have FOUR governors in a row with uneven terms. It seems so untidy.
Leavitt 1993 to 2003
Walker 2003 to 2005
Huntsman 2005 to 2009+
Herbert 2009- to whenever
I find it amusing to see what AP considered "liberal" reform.
The liquor reform is mostly image and could not possibly come at a worse possible time. If we want to get serious about real private insurance reform, then the Utah government first needs to get real public health reform, which means less smoking, less illicit drugs, less alcohol not more alcohol, less marijuana, less sugar, more exercise, more healthy fruits and vegetables.
AP forgets to mention that his support of civil union legislation in Utah fell on completely deaf and bigoted ears in the Utah legislature -- or as we locals refer to it out here in the west -- the Politburo.
I do not look forward to the upcoming special election for governor. Poor Governor-designate Gary Herbert. I do not envy him. While Huntsman leave us for the glamour and sophistication and glittering social seasons of Beijing, Herbert gets stuck in Salt Lake City with all our unpleasant problems associated with the Great Depression of 2009 plus and all the social and governmental reforms that need tending and caring.
Heaven only knows that we should base the election on sound conservative economics, health insurance reform, health care reform, public education finance reform, county boundary reform. Unfortunately, it will probably get bogged down in whether or not only heterosexuals should have the right to multiple sex partners and easy divorces.
Obama to name Utah governor envoy to China
Yahoo! News
AP
15 May 2009 9:00 p.m. MDT
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK – A source close to Utah's Governor Jon Huntsman says President Barack Obama plans to name the Republican governor as ambassador to China.
The source says Huntsman has accepted the appointment.
An announcement was expected at the White House Saturday morning.
The 49-year old Huntsman is a Mormon who liberalized Utah's restrictive liquor laws and has nudged the state in a more moderate direction on the environment and gay rights.
Huntsman has been mentioned as a potential 2012 presidential contender. He served as ambassador to Singapore under President George W. Bush. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and has an adopted daughter from China.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
RIGHTASCENSION ASSUMES THE AIR OF SOPHISTICATED BEMUSEMENT
Jon Huntsman is rich, he speaks Mandarian, he has experience in China, he has ambassadorial experience in Asia. President Obama's idea is a brilliant one --- especially since it gets one of Obama's rivals for the 2012 election out of the way and in his employee in far off Beijing.
Huntsman, we hear, wants to be president, and so to that end, it is better for his future political career to go to Beijing -- which is not swimming in red ink and which still has power to spare -- than to hang around in Washington and Salt Lake City where he will find himself embroiled in all kinds of local unpleasantness in the next three years.
From 1895 to 2002, no Utah governor died in office or resigned. All the governors' terms stood neatly in a row in increments of 4 or 8 or 12 years. Now -- Utah will have FOUR governors in a row with uneven terms. It seems so untidy.
Leavitt 1993 to 2003
Walker 2003 to 2005
Huntsman 2005 to 2009+
Herbert 2009- to whenever
I find it amusing to see what AP considered "liberal" reform.
The liquor reform is mostly image and could not possibly come at a worse possible time. If we want to get serious about real private insurance reform, then the Utah government first needs to get real public health reform, which means less smoking, less illicit drugs, less alcohol not more alcohol, less marijuana, less sugar, more exercise, more healthy fruits and vegetables.
AP forgets to mention that his support of civil union legislation in Utah fell on completely deaf and bigoted ears in the Utah legislature -- or as we locals refer to it out here in the west -- the Politburo.
I do not look forward to the upcoming special election for governor. Poor Governor-designate Gary Herbert. I do not envy him. While Huntsman leave us for the glamour and sophistication and glittering social seasons of Beijing, Herbert gets stuck in Salt Lake City with all our unpleasant problems associated with the Great Depression of 2009 plus and all the social and governmental reforms that need tending and caring.
Heaven only knows that we should base the election on sound conservative economics, health insurance reform, health care reform, public education finance reform, county boundary reform. Unfortunately, it will probably get bogged down in whether or not only heterosexuals should have the right to multiple sex partners and easy divorces.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
IN MEMORIAM: UNCLE GLEN
Uncle Glen died on 4 May 2009 at the age of 90. I visited him a couple of times in 2007 and 2008 when he was obviously in decline. He was one of those guys who got better looking with age; at the end, he looked just down right distinguished.
He was my father’s brother who earned his living as a public school science teacher married to an elementary school teacher. His career went through various schools and various phases from 1946 to 1981.
The children of Henry and Elisa Long Soulier lasted in time a little over 103 years which, for a total of six kids, is really rather a long time. Here is the official listing and names and years.
child lifespan spouse and life span
Ernest 1906 1907
Iona 1908 1986* Erven 1905 1993 Married 1933
Clarence 1912 2000 Cora 1918 2004+ Married 1949
Wesley 1913 2004+ Lucille 1912 1996 Married 1938
Paul 1916 1991 Gladys Married 1942
Glen 1919 2009 Ardis 1920 1986* Married 1940
* Both died in 1986 on a 15th day of a month, Ardis in August and Iona in December.
+ Both died within a month of each other, Wesley in January, Mother in February.
The family legend my parents taught me about my adoption involved Glen and Ardis. In the 1950s, couples who wanted to adopt had to wait for years for the legal tumblers to fall together. For example, my parents filled out the legal documents and paper work and endured the visits in the early 1950s, and then waited and waited and waited until suddenly without warning on 12 September 1956 the representative from the Children’s Society of Utah telephoned from the Salt Lake City office to tell my parents that they had a boy to place with them. This caught them quite unaware and right in the midst of the 1956 peach harvest. Eventually Mother placed a call to Ardis to tell them about the predictament, and Glen and Ardis came through with a big load of baby things that they no longer needed, Scott being 6 years of age and Jacqueline 4. They stopped by Glen and Ardis’s home in Midvale on the way home for supper and supplies.
Another aspect of this legend is that when the Society representative telephoned on 12 September, they had another baby boy in mind to place with them. It turned out though that child had relatives in Provo, so when my parents arrived the Society’s social workers sent them away for an hour while they made a necessary adjustment. The feeling of this tale was that I was some sort of last minute replacement, though I thought it added to the glamour of the situation.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Glen’s family and Clarence’s family used to camp together on occasion in the Mirror Lake region. I have a photo of Scott and me at Mirror Lake when we both quite little boys.
And now – for all the children and cousins of the family of Henry and Elisa Soulier, there is no one between us and death. To Erven, Iona, Clarence, Cora, Wesley, Lu, Paul, Gladys, Glen, Ardis, Gayle – my love and my thanks for everything.
He was my father’s brother who earned his living as a public school science teacher married to an elementary school teacher. His career went through various schools and various phases from 1946 to 1981.
The children of Henry and Elisa Long Soulier lasted in time a little over 103 years which, for a total of six kids, is really rather a long time. Here is the official listing and names and years.
child lifespan spouse and life span
Ernest 1906 1907
Iona 1908 1986* Erven 1905 1993 Married 1933
Clarence 1912 2000 Cora 1918 2004+ Married 1949
Wesley 1913 2004+ Lucille 1912 1996 Married 1938
Paul 1916 1991 Gladys Married 1942
Glen 1919 2009 Ardis 1920 1986* Married 1940
* Both died in 1986 on a 15th day of a month, Ardis in August and Iona in December.
+ Both died within a month of each other, Wesley in January, Mother in February.
The family legend my parents taught me about my adoption involved Glen and Ardis. In the 1950s, couples who wanted to adopt had to wait for years for the legal tumblers to fall together. For example, my parents filled out the legal documents and paper work and endured the visits in the early 1950s, and then waited and waited and waited until suddenly without warning on 12 September 1956 the representative from the Children’s Society of Utah telephoned from the Salt Lake City office to tell my parents that they had a boy to place with them. This caught them quite unaware and right in the midst of the 1956 peach harvest. Eventually Mother placed a call to Ardis to tell them about the predictament, and Glen and Ardis came through with a big load of baby things that they no longer needed, Scott being 6 years of age and Jacqueline 4. They stopped by Glen and Ardis’s home in Midvale on the way home for supper and supplies.
Another aspect of this legend is that when the Society representative telephoned on 12 September, they had another baby boy in mind to place with them. It turned out though that child had relatives in Provo, so when my parents arrived the Society’s social workers sent them away for an hour while they made a necessary adjustment. The feeling of this tale was that I was some sort of last minute replacement, though I thought it added to the glamour of the situation.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Glen’s family and Clarence’s family used to camp together on occasion in the Mirror Lake region. I have a photo of Scott and me at Mirror Lake when we both quite little boys.
And now – for all the children and cousins of the family of Henry and Elisa Soulier, there is no one between us and death. To Erven, Iona, Clarence, Cora, Wesley, Lu, Paul, Gladys, Glen, Ardis, Gayle – my love and my thanks for everything.
Monday, May 4, 2009
SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: OUR LEADERS DISTRIBUTE THEIR OWN WEIGHT IN WORDS
HERE'S A QUOTE FROM THE NEWS THAT SOUNDS MORE RATIONAL THAN IT ACTUALLY IS.
President Barack Obama's search to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter should extend beyond the current roster of federal judges, senators from both political parties said Sunday.
COMMENTARY
It's lovely rhetoric, but highly unlikely, folks. Earl Warren was the last elected politician Supreme Court justice and Robert Jackson was the last Supreme Court Justice who did not have law school training.
We have here for y'all to read some quotations from Our Leaders concerning President Obama's upcoming Supreme Court nomination. These quotations come from a Reuters article posted on 3 May:
President Barack Obama's search to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter should extend beyond the current roster of federal judges, senators from both political parties said Sunday.
COMMENTARY
It's lovely rhetoric, but highly unlikely, folks. Earl Warren was the last elected politician Supreme Court justice and Robert Jackson was the last Supreme Court Justice who did not have law school training.
We have here for y'all to read some quotations from Our Leaders concerning President Obama's upcoming Supreme Court nomination. These quotations come from a Reuters article posted on 3 May:
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy "I would like to see more people from outside the judicial monastery, somebody who has had some real-life experience, not just as a judge,"
Noting that all nine justices came directly from the federal appeals court, senators on the committee said someone with a wider breadth of experience would be a plus.
"I would like to see, certainly, more women on the court. Having only one woman on the Supreme Court does not reflect the makeup of the United States. I think we should have more women. We should have more minorities," Leahy said.
President Obama said last week he wanted someone with empathy for average Americans.
Conservatives fear that means the president would consider "judicial activists" for the seat.
COMMENTARY Oh brother. This despite that fact that the president did not use the words "judicial activists."
Obama said Friday he would nominate a person who combines "empathy and understanding" with an impeccable legal background "who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives."
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania suggested someone in the mold of a statesman or stateswoman, and said he could imagine a nominee who was not a lawyer, if that a person had the right credentials.
"I would like to see somebody with broader experience," Specter said. "We have a very diverse country. We need more people to express a woman's point of view or a minority point of view, Hispanic or African American ... somebody who's done something more than wear a black robe for most of their lives."
COMMENTARY It is ludicrous on the face of it. When one needs a car mechanic or a brain surgeon, we first do not look for someone of broad artistic experience outside garages and hospitals.
When we want a quality judge, we study the available judges.
Utah Senator Orrin Hatch said he hopes Obama will choose someone of "great dimension." At the same time, he said that Obama's criteria raise concern and he contended that the president says he will select a nominee according to that person's politics, feelings and preferences.
"Those are all code words for an activist judge, who is going to, you know, be partisan on the bench. We all know he's going to pick a more liberal justice. Their side will make sure that it's a pro-abortion justice. I don't think anybody has any illusions about that," he said. "The question is, are they qualified? Are they going to be people who will be fair to the rich, the poor, the weak, the strong, the sick, the disabled."
Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama said empathy should be only part of the criteria for a nominee and that a justice should follow the law, not make it.
"But if he will appoint a pragmatist, someone who is not an ideologue ... I think that would be good for the country," Shelby said.
COMMENTARY: Notice that no one in the article mentioned the Constitution. What does the nominee know about the Constitution? Does he believe in it?
LISTEN UP: RIGHT ASCENSION SAYS IT AGAIN:
If Alito and Roberts constitute what Republicans think Supreme Court Justices should be -- then they should not be nominating justices.
The senators should question the nominee on a wide variety of topics and issues. The senators should pass a Constitutional Amendment if they think that the Right to Choose or the Right of Privacy or The Right to an Abortion on Demand as Birth Control are so really important. If we make the points clear in writing in the document, then we would not have to obsess and handwring every time the President nominates somebody to the Supreme Court.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
TORTURE EDITORIAL AND RESPONSE RESTATED
The Deseret News published my letter to the editor on 23 April, but it turns out they cut the text considerably from what I intended.
Here, in its entirety, is the editorial I had in mind. I have done a little editing in this version, but this version remains mostly what I had in mind:
THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT
I hope the Justice Department and courts will indict, try, and sentence CIA and FBI agents who tortured our enemies.
Typically people justify these acts by either rationalizing it got good results or everyone else does it.
It is preposterous to say that we should not prosecute people who were merely following orders and did not know better. They knew what they were doing. People torture for the sexual thrill of it. In history, we did not decide to not prosecute the workers of the holocaust simply because they were following orders. These people did immoral acts against fellow human beings. Punishment followed.
If my teenage child told me that he or she did some outrageous violent act on a teenage child because other teenagers did it and because it achieved good results, I would probably ground that child until he was 35. We should not be swayed by the same sort of preposterous logic.
Attorneys and judges who ruled that the USA could torture our enemies gave bad advise. However, their opinions -- while idiotic -- were abstractions. The federal agents, CIA operatives, and soldiers who did the torturing should be removed and punished. If they think they can get away with torturing with impunity our enemies because they are our enemies, soon they will torture ordinary American citizens for sport. Torture is a sexual thrill, not a technique. The USA should avoid it on principle.
ASIDE -- Why does Cheney publicly defend "harsh interegation," not Bush? Why exactly does Cheney livie in Virginia and publicly stick his nose into this controversy with his defensive defensiveness?
We should exile Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to Elba.
This wasn't about security. It was some sort of perverse excitement.
COMMENTARY ON COMMENTARY
My truncated letter generated 49 responses in Deseret News on-line edition. The very next day, the Deseret News printed a letter in response justifying torture. This means that the writer interrupted his daily routine to bang out the letter and email it. That letter generated 110 responses in the on-line Deseret News.
For the record, let me note that a standard rationalization for both torturing and justifying torture states we have to resort to it if a terrorist has planted an atomic bomb or some other dangerous device in a crowded place, and it will wreak havoc in just a few minutes.
First, the odds of this sort of situation happening to us individually remain, thank heaven, remote.
Second, the use of nagging, crying, begging, bribing, and guilt work as well. They don't get our hands dirty or bloody, either.
RIGHT ASCENSION'S MAIN POINT
If we allow federal militaries to torture with impunity, it will not be long before local police will torture with impunity as well. The half life of a bad example lasts forever, especially if it involves the sexual thrills of dominance and pain.
Here, in its entirety, is the editorial I had in mind. I have done a little editing in this version, but this version remains mostly what I had in mind:
THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT
I hope the Justice Department and courts will indict, try, and sentence CIA and FBI agents who tortured our enemies.
Typically people justify these acts by either rationalizing it got good results or everyone else does it.
It is preposterous to say that we should not prosecute people who were merely following orders and did not know better. They knew what they were doing. People torture for the sexual thrill of it. In history, we did not decide to not prosecute the workers of the holocaust simply because they were following orders. These people did immoral acts against fellow human beings. Punishment followed.
If my teenage child told me that he or she did some outrageous violent act on a teenage child because other teenagers did it and because it achieved good results, I would probably ground that child until he was 35. We should not be swayed by the same sort of preposterous logic.
Attorneys and judges who ruled that the USA could torture our enemies gave bad advise. However, their opinions -- while idiotic -- were abstractions. The federal agents, CIA operatives, and soldiers who did the torturing should be removed and punished. If they think they can get away with torturing with impunity our enemies because they are our enemies, soon they will torture ordinary American citizens for sport. Torture is a sexual thrill, not a technique. The USA should avoid it on principle.
ASIDE -- Why does Cheney publicly defend "harsh interegation," not Bush? Why exactly does Cheney livie in Virginia and publicly stick his nose into this controversy with his defensive defensiveness?
We should exile Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to Elba.
This wasn't about security. It was some sort of perverse excitement.
COMMENTARY ON COMMENTARY
My truncated letter generated 49 responses in Deseret News on-line edition. The very next day, the Deseret News printed a letter in response justifying torture. This means that the writer interrupted his daily routine to bang out the letter and email it. That letter generated 110 responses in the on-line Deseret News.
For the record, let me note that a standard rationalization for both torturing and justifying torture states we have to resort to it if a terrorist has planted an atomic bomb or some other dangerous device in a crowded place, and it will wreak havoc in just a few minutes.
First, the odds of this sort of situation happening to us individually remain, thank heaven, remote.
Second, the use of nagging, crying, begging, bribing, and guilt work as well. They don't get our hands dirty or bloody, either.
RIGHT ASCENSION'S MAIN POINT
If we allow federal militaries to torture with impunity, it will not be long before local police will torture with impunity as well. The half life of a bad example lasts forever, especially if it involves the sexual thrills of dominance and pain.
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