Roundup: On the Torture Report

Simply put, the CIA was counterproductive, sadistic, and incompetent.

David Cole in the New Yorker.

Charlie Savage and James Risen in the New York Times.

Shane Harris and Tim Mak in the Daily Beast.

 Nick Baumann, Jenna McLaughlin, Patrick Caldwell and Mariah Blake in MoJo.

Max Fisher at Vox.

There is no excuse for this. None. It is absolutely maddening.

What's even more galling? The only person from the CIA in prison is John Kiriakou, the person who first alerted the public to the interrogation program.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

My Very Brief Thoughts on the Impending Government Shutdown

Though I prefer the term 'classical liberal,' I'm a libertarian. I am highly skeptical of government, both in intent and general competence. I wish the government, and the federal government in particular, did a lot less than it is currently charged with. All that being said, a federal government shutdown will likely be a disaster and a mindless exercise of political self-mutilation.

For one, it won't stop ObamaCare or any other entitlement or longstanding government program. Thus, all this is about being obstinate for its own sake. It won't be the end of the world if it's shut down for a few days, but what will happen is that government services upon which people depend, rely, or otherwise enjoy will be unavailable to much of the public or otherwise crippled in their effectiveness. And who will get the blame for this absence/dramatic reduction in service? Tea party/libertarian/small government types because the people responsible pay hollow lipservice to their ideals.

This is the wrong way to sell smaller government.

Think of it this way: take an addicted cigarette smoker. You want to convince him to quit for his own good, but he's not ready. Well, instead of reasoning with him or convincing him there are alternatives to smoking--nicotine gums, patches, e-cigs, jogging, whatever--you just steal his cigarettes and prevent him from getting his fix by whatever means you can.

Now this guy is going to be pissed at you. This is because you haven't convinced him he doesn't really want that cigarette--you have just taken it from him and made him angry. Very, very angry. Even though smokers know the stuff is bad for them, many who may want to quit haven't found a way that works for them. You've now made that decision for them, but you know it's only a temporary one.

But as soon as you give this guy access to cigarettes again, he'll go buy another pack and may even smoke more. You haven't convinced him there are concrete steps he can take to get over his addiction--you just convinced him you're a stubborn prig who'll make other people miserable just to prove a point. You, and others perceived to be like you, will likely have much less sway with him from that point on because you were an unthinking, uncaring, self-righteous S.O.B.

The GOP is that S.O.B.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Shoot the Messenger

Jim Moran is my congressman. I am not a big fan, and--if I were in a better frame of mind--I'd probably think he goes over the line of acceptable things old white guys can say here, but that's not why I'm writing. I'm writing not as his constituent, a black man, or a libertarian. I'm writing this as a copy editor. Indeed, my beef isn't with Moran--it's with whomever wrote this travesty of a transcription:

"He just seems clueless not that he has climbed abroad ship. He's climbed this latter of opportunity that was constructed by so many of his ancestors' sweat, sacrifice, blood, you know they did everything they could for his generation to be successful. But now that he's climbed abroad ship, instead of reaching down and steadying the latter, he wants to push it off. 'I'm up here. If you're not with me, too bad.' And President Obama, fortunately, is the kind of guy that says 'I was very fortunate to get where I am and I'm going to spend my life trying to steady that latter of opportunity by reducing college tuition and training our workers, trying to get a decent job for everybody. Making sure that while I'm African-American, it really doesn't matter. What matters is my commitment to public service, my love for this country and I'm going to leave a constructive legacy,'" he said. (italics mine)

TWO "abroad" ships? THREE "latters" of opportunity? This copy is so bad I can't even get mad at Moran. I need some aspirin. (click to embiggen)

HOUSEKEEPING: For those of you looking for something more substantive from me, I'm in the editing process of an essay I wrote about libertarians and the Confederacy. I hope to get it up at Libertarianism.org late this week or early next week. -jpb


bellum medicamenti delenda est

Just for Fun Friday: When She Broke English

Yesterday, a wonderful and awful thing happened: this piece of overwrought high middle school scribbling was published over at Thought Catalog. It's not just that it's bad -- it's that it is so terrible that one has to wonder if it's actually satirical commentary on the state of American education. A sample:

When she closed her eyes sometimes she could smell him, his pungent body odor, the way she possessed it when their blushing bodies rubbed together in awkward embrace, her soft fleshy thigh against his, his flushed chest against her beating breast. She remembered most the heavy weight of his naked body when he shuddered against her, relaxed his muscles, and eased into her torso, those rare moments where the whole world fell away and they became nothing more than each other, an ugly fleshy mass of hair and limbs that was her primal perfection. Then they would sit for hours, nude, absorbed in nothingness, and those were the moments she loved best. She would feed him cheese on crackers and he would turn to her with an expression of complete surprise; it was in those moments that it seemed like he had only just laid his eyes on her for the first time, and while he was momentarily absorbed in a rapt wonderment she would gorge herself on his love.

The unintended consequences of abstinence only sex ed: torso sex. With cheese and crackers.

I could go on for hours, but you really should just read it in its entirety. Additionally, I highly recommend the dramatic reading of this literary monstrosity, as performed by Ms. Emily Crockett:



Remember kids: don't play Mad Libs with a thesaurus. It's not a toy.

Have a good weekend!

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Crash Course in Black History: New N****r Rule

By now you've heard that President Obama has released his "long form" birth certificate in order to quell the two-year-old conspiracy theory that a liberal cabal has managed to pull off the greatest case of identity fraud in human history.

Honestly, before I get into the meat of this post, I just want to say that this was the most preposterous allegation/conspiracy theory I have ever heard. The JFK assassination Cuba-Mafia-KGB conspiracy, the 'faked' Moon landing and '9/11 was an inside job' (aka "Truthers") all have more plausible premises--and they are all bullshit too. To have pulled this off, one would have needed to plan, implement, and maintain a flawless conspiracy over the course of four decades between multiple state agencies of Illinois and Hawaii, his posh private school in Hawaii, two Ivy League schools, the Illinois Bar Association, the government of Kenya and/or Indonesia, the Social Security Administration, the State Department, the IRS and god knows what other federal departments and kept it all a secret.

Elvis and Tupac are sitting on a beach somewhere saying "They can't really believe this shit, can they?"

Anyway, a recurring complaint from the Right since the release this morning has been "I just don't get why he didn't release this sooner!" The quick answer is: because he shouldn't have to. This accusation was ridiculous on its face and for all the 'respect for the office' the Right likes to trot out when it suits them, addressing this idiocy really is beneath the president of the United States. But as my friend Adam Serwer so eloquently wrote over at WaPo's Plum Line today:

Aside from being one of the most idiotic moments in American political history, this marks a level of personal humiliation no previous president has ever been asked to endure. Other presidents have been the target of crazy conspiracy theories, sure, but few have been as self-evidently absurd as birtherism. None has been so clearly rooted in anxieties about the president’s racial identity, because no previous American president has been black.

This whole situation is an embarrassment to the country. Yesterday Jesse Jackson described birtherism as racial “code,” but there’s nothing “coded” about it. It’s just racism. I don’t mean that everyone who has doubts about the president’s birthplace is racist. Rather, the vast majority have been deliberately misled by an unscrupulous conservative media and by conservative elites who have failed or refused to challenge these doubts.

And birtherism is only one of a number of racially charged conspiracy theories that have bubbled out of the right-wing swamp and have been allowed to fester by conservative elites. Those who have spent the last two years clinging to the notion that the president wasn’t born in the United States, who have alleged that the president wasn’t intelligent enough to write his own autobiography or somehow coasted to magna cum laude at Harvard law, are carrying on new varieties of an old, dying tradition of American racism. Similar accusations dogged early black writers like Frederick Douglass and Phyllis Wheatley, whose brilliance provoked an existential crisis among people incapable of abandoning myths of black intellectual inferiority.

Indeed, asking more of black people than is asked of or expected from whites is as old as racism itself. Black 'pioneers' have always had to face extra challenges from people incapable of dealing with black achievement or legitimacy. The older generations of black folk would tell their kids--as my father told me--that black people should never try to be as good as our white counterparts: we must strive to be better because 'as good' would not be good enough. (Both because of my complexion and meaningful societal change over my lifetime, this has not been an academic or professional hindrance to me. But the message took.)

Such is the standard operating procedure to confront what has been called, most notably by comedian Paul Mooney, the "New Nigger Rule." My definition follows:

A NNR is a legal or administrative procedure which is enforced with benign pretense, yet has the demonstrable effect of abetting racism, prejudice, or otherwise just screwing the black guy. Historical examples include, but are not limited to, the Grandfather Clause, poll taxes, and literacy/constitutional knowledge tests to vote.

Nota bene: all of these are forms of disenfranchisement.

Mark Thompson of the League explains what Obama had to do to get his long form and make it public:

Quite literally, in order to release this document, the President had to ask to be treated as being above the law, even if it is a relatively trivial law in the grand scheme of things.  Quite understandably, the State of Hawaii decided that this was a wise idea.  That so many are prepared to insist that the President had an obligation to ask that he be treated as above the law from a very early date is far more troubling.

That Obama should have been expected to file a waiver to get an obscure document that no one else has had to produce and make it public to dispel a rumor based on absurd conjecture and outright lies is clearly a New Nigger Rule.

I agree with Adam that it would not be fair to call all Birthers "racists." Maligning or otherwise assigning such terms to groups of people is unproductive and usually wrong factually and morally. That said, there can be no question at all that Obama had to deal with this because he's black. That is a fucking shame, and that is why he didn't release it earlier.

And he never should have had to.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Mood Music Monday

Just saw this nonsense by Glenn Beck. I'm just in stunned awe of the irresponsible absurdity that he and the greater Fox News Channel has become. Just...flabbergasted.

Anyway, this came on my iTunes shortly after I finished the video linked above, so I thought it only appropriate: Arcade Fire's "Antichrist Television Blues."



PS -- if you were one of the people who'd never heard of Arcade Fire before they won Album of the Year at the Grammy's, get to know them. They are great. Got to see them live last year at Merriweather Post Pavillion--great show.

Mitch Daniels: Yielding to 'Forces of Homosexual Extremism'

From a profile of Indiana's Republican governor, Mitch Daniels:

And then, [Daniels] says, the next president, whoever he is, “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We’re going to just have to agree to get along for a little while,” until the economic issues are resolved. Daniels is pro-life himself, and he gets high marks from conservative religious groups in his state. He serves as an elder at the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, in inner-city Indianapolis, which he’s attended for 50 years. In 1998, with a few other couples from Tabernacle and a nearby Baptist congregation, he and his wife founded a “Christ-centered” school, The Oaks Academy, in a downtown neighborhood the local cops called “Dodge City.” It’s flourishing now with 315 mostly poor kids who pursue a classical education: Latin from third grade on, logic in middle school, rhetoric in eighth grade, an emphasis throughout on the treasures of Western Civilization. “It’s the most important thing I’ve ever been involved in,” he told me. (emphases mine)

Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association's director of issue analysis, says,

"When you [call a truce], you're yielding the field to the forces of homosexual extremism."

Perhaps such purportedly callow surrender, as practiced by Mitch Daniels, is something more conservatives should consider instead of arming the circular firing squad now gathering outside of CPAC.

HT: Dara

Quote of the Day: Post-Racial America

"I was talking with some of the parents from leo high school, and the general consensus is that the busing of the harding students to our school is going to create a mass exodus of wealthy famillies from the area, as... well as many of us pulling our children out of the school and sending them to cantebury [prep school] and bishop luers [one of two local Catholic high schools], also auburn schools came up in the conversation. the long term effect of this will be the selling of homes to move to better school districts. It really sucks that i just paid $400,000 for a house in the best school district in northern indiana, only to have a bunch of saggy pant snoop dog wanna be's trucked into my neighborhood like cattle." (emphasis mine)

- A blog comment, supposedly from a Leo High School parent, discussing the closure of my poor, mostly black high school alma mater and the forced busing of its students to the rest of the mostly white district and specifically to Leo, the (overwhelmingly white) crown jewel of the East Allen County School system.


Welcome to post-racial America.


Via my friend Jamie Garwood.

Addendum: This is not to say I support the busing plan -- indeed, this battle has been raging since I was a student and I'm generally opposed for several reasons. I shared this for the characterization of the school and the students in it--not any tacit support of the plan. -jpb

And a Silver Star for Prison Nurseries!

There is just so much wrong with this Northern Ohio editorial about a report on incarcerated women:

The report, released Thursday by the National Women's Law Center and the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, analyzes policies in three areas — prenatal care, shackling of pregnant women during childbirth, and community-based alternatives to incarceration enabling mothers to be with their children.

Only one state, Pennsylvania, received an A. Ohio received a C, scoring a D in prenatal care, a D in shackling policies and an A in community-based alternatives. Ohio also earned a B for its prison nurseries.

Let's put aside the awfulness of reading a sentence that "also" gives a letter grade to a prison nursery system and discuss the "alternatives to incarceration." Here's an alternative: let's try eliminating mandatory minimums:

As a backdrop to its findings, the report noted the number of women in prison — more than 115,000 as of 2009 — has risen at a higher rate than that of men since the introduction of mandatory sentencing policies for many drug offenses. It said most of the women are nonviolent, first-time offenders, and about two-thirds have at least one child under 18. (emphasis mine)

Put two and two together: legislative overreach into the judicial branch has authorized the government to put shackles on non-violent first-time offenders giving birth to children. In what bizarro world is this considered humane? What kind of society does this to a woman?

Well, the News-Herald has an original idea to prevent these situations: Just say "no":

While we support greater accountability and consistency, and while we don't feel women should be shackled to the extent they suffer lasting hip and back injuries while giving birth, as an Arkansas women alleges in a lawsuit, we feel the better way for mothers to avoid these problems is simply to stay out of prison in the first place.

Certainly a pregnant woman's health — and the health of her child — should be accounted for, but ultimately, incarcerated mothers are in the situation they're in because they committed a crime — for which they knew there would be consequences. (emphases added; smug contempt for justice in original.)

Shorter News-Herald: Well, so long as the shackles allow certain leeway so as to prevent injury, we see nothing wrong with treating a woman giving birth with less respect than we would give an animal in a zoo.

The 'crime ergo punishment' argument is as weak as it is tired. Yes, if you commit a crime, you can expect punishment if caught. This does not mean that any and all punishments are acceptable for any given crime.

There is a genuine and disturbing disconnect in this country between those who believe in blind justice, as I do, and those who believe that law and order should be blind to justice.

Photo courtesy of Jane Evelyn Atwood; used without permission.

That someone is labeled a "convict" or a "criminal" is not license to treat them inhumanely. This is even more true for those who have violated laws that are themselves unjust--as most of our drug laws and sentencing laws are.

bellum medicamenti delenda est.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

So The Nation recently published its list of "The Fifty Most Influential Progressives of the Twentieth Century." Regardless of your political leanings, the list is certainly debatable. (I may write more on some of their selections later.) But one of the last paragraphs of the introduction to the list struck me as offensively off-base:

A few of the people on the list expressed views, at some point in their lives, that progressives consider objectionable, such as Margaret Sanger's endorsement of eugenics, Earl Warren's support for rounding up Japanese-Americans during World War II, Bayard Rustin's support for the Vietnam War and Jackie Robinson's attack on Paul Robeson. They made mistakes, which may be understandable in historical context, but which should be acknowledged as part of their lives and times.

Now, it must be mentioned that Jackie did testify before McCarthy's the House Un-American Activities Committee. That's a big deal. But here's some background on exactly went down:



More here.

What, pray tell, do you suppose would have happened if some uppity nigger baseball player told HUAC, by way of polite declination, to shove it's "invitation"? Yet somehow, this action--the reluctant testimony to separate the fight for racial equality from the looming specter of communism--is mentioned in the same sentence with support for a war that killed over a million soldiers and civilians, Margaret Sanger's enthusiastic genocidal attachment to Eugenics and throwing thousands of American citizens into detention camps for their ethnicity. (Without mentioning FDR's role in it, no less.)

This "attack" was mentioned again in Robinson's profile--as was Warren's culpability in the Japanese internment in his own--but Rustin's and Sanger's "mistakes" are stricken from their laudatory bios. Apparently, to Professor Dreier and The Nation's editors, an effectively coerced statement that illustrates differing civil rights approaches--while maintaining the shared contempt of the United States' criminal and unconstitutional discrimination policies--reflects as poorly on Jackie Robinson as the racist dedication of Margaret Sanger and authorizing the false imprisonment of over 100,000 innocent people.

Unbelievable.

It seems Texas education wasn't working that well before... you shouldn't judge Congresspeople by their alma maters

I present Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), national embarrassment:



Someone get this idiot a map and a history book please.

UPDATE: It was brought to my attention that Rep. Jackson-Lee went to Yale, and in confirming this it turns out she's also a grad of UVA Law...and Jamaica High School in Queens, NY. So, apparently, she's a carpetbagging Yankee and not a product of Texas's school system. Apologies to the Lone Star State for the mix-up.

You can't be serious...

Teaser from Washington Post.com:

After Gores, is there hope for us?
Al and Tipper's split doesn't just make us sad. It means that maybe we can't succeed in marriage.

I refuse to click through and read it, mainly because I'm not a ridiculous naïf who looks to professional prudes and liars to give my life meaning.

Gimme a f'n break.

And People Wonder Why Libertarians Assume Government Incompetence

As you probably remember, after 9/11, the newly-created Department of Homeland Security and its head Tom Ridge suggested to the country--with a straight face and no irony--that should there be a chemical or biological attack on the United States, every prepared American would have duct tape to seal themselves in their homes.

Duct tape. (Audio NSFW)

As Lewis notes in the link above, during the Cold War, the powers-that-be told kids to hide under their school desks in case of a nuclear attack. Let that sink in: to defend against the force of nature that powers the Sun and all the stars in the sky--the enormous and unfathomably hot titanic balls of fire--the government said "get under wood."

But as illustrated in the graphic below, this Cold War-era PSA provided an even dumber suggestion--I know, I didn't think it was possible either.  Check out #4:

Apparently, newsprint and anything under it is impervious to nuclear fallout.

SAVE THE NEWSPAPERS!!!

(Thanks to Tim Andrews for the link.)

Strictly Speaking

Strict liability is bullshit.

An ex-soldier handing in a found sawed-off shotgun faces five years in an English prison for illegal possession of a firearm. Of course, he only possessed it in order to get it off the streets and turn it into police:

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for "doing his duty".

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year's imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: "I didn't think for one moment I would be arrested.

"I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets."

The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: "I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

"I didn't know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

"At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall."

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

The story goes on to say that Mr. Clarke's intent is irrelevant because gun possession is a "strict liability" offense, meaning that no matter how one comes into possession of a banned item or substance, or whether or not one had mens rea--criminal intent--he is technically guilty.

This is doubly frustrating because he faces "at least" five years in prison. Like some gun and other criminal offenses in the United States, Mr. Clarke is poised to lose five years of his liberty for doing the right thing because of mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

One-size-fits-all laws are pernicious. While most of these laws were crafted to bring uniformity and fairness to criminal sentencing--consistency , generally speaking, is a good thing--they become inflexible barriers to true justice in many cases. As I have said before, judges should be allowed to assess the facts of any given case to bring about a just conclusion to a criminal matter. Statutory constraints like "strict liability"--particularly when coupled with mandatory minimum sentences--cross the line from proper legislative decisionmaking into what should be exclusively judicial purview. Stripping judges of their ability to judge mitigating factors--or, in this case, undisputed facts that should have led to immediate dismissal--can result in the state committing crimes against its citizenry.

While I'm not familiar with the English criminal justice system, given that America's common law is a direct descendant of English common law, there has to be some executive or other official that can issue a pardon for this man. They should issue that pardon immediately, in addition to an apology.

Last year, I wrote a piece for reason on mandatory minimum sentences as they applied to ex-(and hopefully future) NFL star Plaxico Burress, that can be found here. Also, in today's WSJ, the feds are rethinking mandatory minimum policy. Let's hope (against hope, probably) that they get this right, at least on a federal level.

iRat

Despite Godwin's Law, there comes a point when analogies to certain vicious security states of the 20th century are appropriate. This video has made me so angry that I'm gonna "go there" to make my point.




There is something so fundamentally wrong with this campaign that I'm getting a migraine from trying to figure out where to begin.

Even at the height of the Third Reich, there were very few Gestapo officers relative to the population of Germany and, subsequently, German-occupied Europe. Thus, to get information, the government relied heavily on everyday citizens reporting to the Gestapo's local and regional offices. The files recovered after the war document the copious amounts of information they had collected, most of which was voluntarily given by citizens about other citizens. Like today's "fusion centers" that aggregate data on Americans, the Gestapo had too much information to run efficiently. (Former FBI agent Mike German has done invaluable work on fusion centers at the ACLU.)

Collecting information this way is not only a threat to individual liberty, but it also is counter-productive to law enforcement's legitimate and necessary counter-terrorism efforts because the resources required to investigate so many bogus leads. Thus, informing on fellow citizens actually helps terrorists because law enforcement agents are too busy wasting their time with superfluous allegations. (Of course, law enforcement will happily arrest and prosecute people for whatever non-terrorism related information they find as they dig into the lives of those people unlucky enough to be reported on.)

Our police should do their jobs and our citizens should mind their own damned business.

H/T: Allison Gibbs

'Only 1.5%-5%...'

Today is apparently 'International WTF Day':

The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was "busy cleaning its own house" and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger.

In a defiant and provocative statement, issued following a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the Holy See said the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not paedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males.

The statement, read out by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to the UN, defended its record by claiming that "available research" showed that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse.

Oh, only 1.5%-5%? Substitute "my friends" or "my colleagues" or "my employees" for "Catholic clergy" and one starts to get the idea of how repugnant to all moral decency this release is.

The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.

"Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."

Oh, well. Once you put it that way...

Politically correct terms cannot and should not be used to obfuscate the plain and simple truth that the Catholic Church aided, abetted, transferred and gave shelter to hundreds (or perhaps thousands, given their own numbers) of known child molesters...for decades. That they still have the nerve to publish garbage such as this is a testament to the wicked obstinacy of its hierarchy and is further proof that so many who have suffered by their hands will not receive justice in this life.


It's people like this that make me hope there is a Hell.

H/T: Democracy in America

Nota Bene: This condemnation has nothing to do with God or individual Catholics' relationship with their God: this is about a specific organized religious order. The Catholic Church is a globally recognized political entity that is so morally bankrupt that it passes itself off as the collective voice of God on Earth while issuing press releases that rationalize child molestation.

Empire State Building to Celebrate the Starvation and Murder of Millions

No, really:

NEW YORK — New York's iconic Empire State Building will light up red and yellow Wednesday in honor of the 60th anniversary of communist China.

The Chinese consul, Peng Keyu, and other officials will take part in the lighting ceremony which will bathe the skyscraper in the colors of the People's Republic until Thursday, Empire State Building representatives said in a statement.

The upper sections of the building are regularly illuminated to mark special occasions, ranging from all blue to mark "Old Blue Eyes" Frank Sinatra's death in 1998 to green for the annual Saint Patrick's Day.

I'm all for trading with China because it enriches our country and helps get their hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But that in no way should be viewed as an endorsement of, let alone celebration of, their government.

ESB, seriously, WTF????

H/T Kevin Williamson

On Christian Fundamentalism

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am not a religious person, or even a man of faith. I avoided writing about religion because I never wanted to turn into one of the proselytizing pedants that harassed me about my atheism in grade school. Their ungracious efforts to prove their own faith by converting me embittered me toward religion and most people with any sort of pronounced faith. (Thankfully, I have since made my peace with religious people--some of my best friends are Christians--and religion generally.)

I don't usually like reading about religious debate either. Political or otherwise interesting bloggers that engage in theological navel-gazing usually drone on ad nauseam, offering less information about God than their own departure from reason and their rationalizations for preferring one strain of ancient demagoguery to another. I'm all for faith if you can muster it, but I'm not at all interested in mundane personal journeys of people I don't know.

I also didn't really feel like 'coming out' as an atheist to my more religious family members in order to prevent any lectures on Jesus at family reunions, but I read something so menacingly stupid today that I felt compelled to comment:

When author J.K. Rowling was proposed as a recipient for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Bush [43] nixed the idea because Rowling’s Harry Potter series “encouraged witchcraft.”

While I am no fan of Bush, I always assumed he was smarter than his popular image. And, given the undeniably high intellect of William F. Buckley, Jr. and his unquestionable faith in God, I usually tread very lightly in associating intelligence and religious/spiritual belief. But anyone who believes that Harry Potter encourages witchcraft is an imbecile, period.

The books' popularity doesn't negate the assertion of 'pro-witchcraft' leanings--common sense does. God or no God, the fact that whomever suggested it wasn't immediately mocked and thrown out of the room makes me shudder that the corridors of power were ever staffed with anyone so asinine to believe it or so spineless as to know its absurdity and ignore it.

Seriously, though, I know that this way of thinking represents a much higher number of people than I like to admit. I was once placed into a Mennonite youth group and was thereby introduced to the surreal worldview of Christian fundamentalists. I won't go into all the gory details, but suffice it to say that anything secular was treated with suspicion, and anything in fiction that paralleled God in any way—e.g., the Force in "Star Wars"—was evidence of the Devil's workings. I don't know which was more ridiculous: their belief that fantasy fiction was intentionally meant to subvert Christianity or that they were actually afraid of it. (I know Darth Vader was evil, but damn.)

This ingrained fear of fiction spilled well-beyond fantasy and into other works that dealt with unpleasant (esp. sexual) subject matter. These See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil types are the book burners of old. They are the censors. They are the people that perpetuate ignorance, in the name of public morals. They look to quash anything that challenges their worldview, and thus, their control over others. They are, in short, evil in their own way.

The fact that these people ever rose to such power in this country actually scares me. The fact that I ever voted for them makes me sick.

Terrorists Foiled Plot for "Darwin Award" Immortality

At least the foiled terror plots are getting more entertaining. From the DOJ press release:

First, the superseding indictment charges Daniel Patrick Boyd, aka "Saifullah," and Hysen Sherifi with conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1117. The superseding indictment alleges, among other things, that in furtherance of this agreement, Boyd undertook reconnaissance of the Marine Corps Base located in Quantico, Va., and obtained maps of the base in order to plan an attack on Quantico. According to the superseding indictment, Boyd possessed armor piercing ammunition, stating it was "to attack the Americans." A conviction for conspiring to violate Title 18, United States Code, Section 1117 has a maximum penalty of imprisonment for any term of years or life, and/or a $250,000 fine, followed by five years of supervised release.

Let me repeat that: the plot was to, among other things, storm the sprawling military complex full of gung-ho Marines in Quantico, Virginia. I've been there. It's in the middle of nowhere. It is a place that is perfectly suited for "Surviving the Game," and these idiots were gonna walk right into it voluntarily, guns blazing.

I saw a Marine veteran interviewed about the plot on the news last night. I don't know if the reporter was that naive or just playing straight man, because the vet looked rather incredulously at the him when he asked why a handful of self-trained nitwits attacking a base full of Marines was, in the vet's words, a "bad idea." He tempered himself by saying (paraphrasing) "because [the terrorists] would get their brains blown out."

I've never served in our armed forces, and I have nothing but respect for those that do so don't take the following the wrong way: having met my share of Marines, I don't think it's any stretch to say that hunting down a merry band of shit-brained terrorists on the grounds of Quantico would brighten more than a few of their days. I, obviously, don't want to see any of our servicemen hurt. But I just find it unlikely the Marines would have any trouble whatever dispatching Boyd and his crew of bearded misfits, with a tad bit of glee to boot.

To wit, instead of life in prison, maybe they should be sentenced to be dropped into the middle of Quantico with a couple rifles and a "good luck, dumbass" from the USMC.

Headline reference here. And no, for the love of reason, I am not remotely serious about attacks on military bases.

Whoa

Ok. I hate reality shows. I watched the first two seasons of 'The Real World,' and that's about it--oh, and I did watch the first season of The Osbournes. I've never watched 'American Idol' or any of that mess.

So, it's taken me some time to finally click on the pic and news story of this 40-something Scot who'd never been kissed on 'Britain's Got Talent' that has been just about everywhere I look. But once it made the Washington Post, I relented and thought "Ok. Fine. I give up. Let's see how good this woman really is."

Damn. I love Les Misérables, so this was particularly touching. If you're a fan of music at all, you should watch. (Sorry, it's not embeddable)