My Senator, Gordon Smith (R-OR), said on Friday (on the floor of the Senate):
"Our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day, it's absurd. It may even be criminal."
Even though he's Republican, you gotta admire his honesty/cojones.
It looks like Senator Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens' telecommunications bill is dead. Well, at least the new congress looks a bit less likely to pass the idiotic thing.
For those of you who haven't been paying attention, Stevens wanted to give AT&T and their ilk the right to charge big sites (like Google or Amazon) to give them priority over little sites that haven't paid (like yours truly) and better download times. Sort of like taxing mom & pop stores to give WalMart a tax break. Or cutting back on social services to give Halliburton a massive no-bid contract. You know, stuff our government would never do.
Anyway, I still have to write a letter to Gordon Smith to try and get him to change his mind. Hopefully I can get my republican grandpa to do the same.
I just finished my first final exam—Latin Prose—and now I only have to write two term papers and study for a chemistry exam. Anyway, for my exam we had to translate a good chunk of Sallust's Bellum Catilinae (The Catilinarian Conspiracy) and write a "linguistic and historical analysis" of another chunk. Not entirely painless, but not pulling teeth, either.
What brings me to write about this is a speech by Julius Caesar that Sallust quotes. After Catiline, a traitor against Rome, has been discovered, there is a debate in the Senate over whether to execute him (which was illegal, since he was a Roman citizen). After a rather obscure senator named Decimus Silanus (I'm still waiting for Biggus Dickus) makes a speech urging for the death penalty, Julius Caesar—the future emperor of Rome and one of the best prosecutors of the day—makes a speech against the death penalty.
So Caesar was more civilized—2000 years ago—than we are today.
I think anti-death penalty advocates could learn a thing or two from Caesar. He doesn't dispute that Catiline and his co-conspirators are a threat, or that they deserve death. Instead he says, essentially, "yes, we have the power to revoke the Porcian Law (which protected Roman citizens from execution) but we shouldn't because it is not worthy of us and will set a dangerous precedent." I think that we need to refocus the debate on these two arguments. We are honestly getting nowhere with the arguments that capital punishment is unconstitutional (and will get nowhere for some time), or that it doesn't prevent murder, or that we're executing innocent people. We need to say that we are a compassionate people, and a nation of just laws. We are not a people that indulges in mob violence, and we are not a nation of retribution. We must say that the death penalty is perfectly legal, but that we ought to rise above petty retribution.
Bill O'Reilly has been asking liberals whether they want the US to win in Iraq recently. Ignoring the question of whether or not it's possible for us to win, my answer is a definite no. I don't want to win in Iraq, because winning would be bad for both Iraqis and the United States.
First of all, in order for us to "win," there has to be a government in place that is friendly to us. In other words, a dictatorship. Think about it. Every one of our Arab allies in the Middle East is a brutal dictatorship: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Uzbekistan, among others. The only three Arab governments that approach democracy are Palestine, currently controlled by Hamas; Lebanon, where Hezbollah has a majority in parliament; and Iran, which Bush apparently wants to nuke.
Winning would be bad for us, as well. The fact is that we are no longer the empire we once were. When the USSR fell, and no one needed us to "protect" them anymore, we lost a lot of international power. Now, we can't to pump out manufactured goods as quickly as China, and soon we won't be able to compete with India in technological industries. We are losing what was left of our international power quickly.
This is very similar to what happened to France and Great Britain after the Second World War. Their empires started to crumble. England decided to slowly let go of power, and the Brits essentially resigned themselves to not being a world power anymore. France, on the other hand, clung desperately to their colonies, and got walloped in Vietnam, Algeria, and their other colonies. Yet France still has an attitude that would be more appropriate for Napoleon's era.
Now that we are losing our empire, we have two choices: accept our fall gracefully, like Britain, or fight it every inch of the way, like France. If we bow out gracefully, we can keep some of our stature and influence. If we don't, we will be like France—annoying and ignored. If we lose in Iraq, maybe people will wake up to the fact that we're not an empire anymore and will stop acting like we are.
I was hoping I could ignore the brouhaha over Keith Ellison taking his oath of office on the Quran rather than the bible, but Dennis Prager has written a column that is at once very scary and strangely amusing. A couple excerpts:
What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book.
Damn straight. There's this little thing called the First Amendment, Dennis. You might have heard of it. No? I suspected as much.
Ellison's doing so will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, as Islamists, rightly or wrongly, see the first sign of the realization of their greatest goal -- the Islamicization of America.
Yes, what the Islamic extremists want most of all is to see a moderate Muslim serving the United States after having vowed to fight terrorism. Sheesh.
[S]ecular officials did not demand to take their oaths of office on, say, the collected works of Voltaire or on a volume of New York Times editorials, writings far more significant to some liberal members of Congress than the Bible. Nor has one Mormon official demanded to put his hand on the Book of Mormon.
Let's see:
1) I can't think of a single atheist (why he insists on calling atheists "secular" is beyond me) who has been elected to a major position yet.
2) Mormons believe the Old and New Testaments to be holy as well.
3) The whole point of swearing on a Bible is to be sure that you don't break your oath. This is why ancient Greeks made sacrifices to the gods while making important oaths, and Romans grasped their testicles. (I swear I'm not making this up. Testes is the root for "testify.") If you want a Muslim, who doesn't believe in the authenticity of the Christian Bible, to keep his oath, why in God's name would you have him swear on a Bible?
It looks like we really might be headed for a permanent stay in congress. The Hill says (at the bottom of the page) that Republicans are not turning to "self help books" for losers like the Dems did in 2004 (What's the Matter With Kansas, Don't Think of an Elephant, etc.). This could mean (and I hope it does) that republicans are not willing to change, even though their strategy for the past 12 years has fallen apart.
Let the schadenfreude begin!
According to the New York Times. Good for the country, bad for heart patients in Tennessee. A response on the NYT's website:
If this guy is returning to surgery in Tenessee, I hope I don’t have a heart attack when visiting the place. If his memorable diagnosis of Terry Shivo is any indication of his abilities, he might decide I have kidney stones and cut out my appendix.
Sorry for the frivolous post, but this is too funny to pass up. Apparently John Edwards sent an aide to Wal-Mart to buy a PS3. This from the guy who has been so critical of Wal-Mart! It turns out that it was too early to buy one, so they sent his aide home empty handed.
On a slightly more important note, you can plug in your new PS3 to the internet and help Stanford find cures for cancer and Alzheimer's. Sort of like the programs you can download to use your spare processing power to help SETI or Climateprediction.net.
Even over at Feministing, which covered Maryland's rape ruling decision when it came out, the readers seem to think that the decision might be valid. I'm not going to get into the particulars of the case, just the decision.
The case hinges on whether Maryland accepts the old common law definition of rape as a crime against the husband or father, rather than the victim. The Maryland court held that, until Maryland's legislature rejects the common law definition of rape, it stands. Unfortunately for the decision, Maryland has rejected the common law definition. The legislature has made it clear that if a man rapes his wife, it is still a crime. I would say that this rejects the common law definition pretty clearly.
Also, since Maryland's rape law says that it is a crime to "engage in vaginal intercourse with another by force, or the threat of force, without the consent of the other," and both "engaging in vaginal intercourse" and consenting are ongoing acts, the law itself (adopted in 1957) obviously makes continuing the intercourse after the victim withdraws consent a crime.
The only way they could have reached this decision is if they had decided it before they looked at the case law. It's ridiculous.
A Maryland appellate court ruled recently that once a woman has consented to sex, she cannot withdraw her consent. Like Sherry Colb at FindLaw, I can't do their reasoning justice without quoting them.
The concept, undergirding the Battle holding, rooted in ancient laws and adopted by the English common-law, views the initial "deflowering" as the real harm or insult which must be redressed by compensating, in legal contemplation, the injured party - the father or husband. This initial violation of the victim also provided the basis for the criminal proceeding against the offender.
In other words, rape isn't a crime against women, it's a crime against their guardian (read: owner). This is why I want to be an appellate attorney. The decision is morally reprehensible, and their reasoning is insane.
More on this tomorrow. I'm tired and have a chemistry lab in the morning.
There's an article on Slate highlighting some of the problems of single-sex education. Although I think some kids might benefit from the lack of distraction (certain boy-obsessed teenage girls I once knew come to mind), proponents are now pointing to the innate differences in male and female brains and saying that we need to tailor education to each sex.
I'm not an extreme gender feminist, and I do think that there are differences in average male and female brains, but it's dangerous to go from average to individual. These educators are saying that, since the average boy is more mathematical than verbal, and the average girl is more verbal than mathematical, we should play to their instincts. One problem. I'm a guy, and I'm a hell of a lot better with words than with numbers.
They want girls to read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Beloved, etc. and role play; while they have boys read Hemmingway and Lord of the Flies and make maps. This is a horrible idea for young women who are spatial or young men who are predominantly verbal (like me).
And what about the fact that, if girls are so different from boys, they will have different insights and teach each other?
I'm really ashamed of my country right now. South Africa's parliament has just approved same-sex marriages. We're in the process of banning it state by state. Hell, even Spain has same-sex marriage!
The Senate repealed a law passed last month that kept nonnative elk and dear on Santa Rosa Island, near Santa Barbara (and a part of a National Park). Apparently Duncan Hunter slipped a provision into a defense programs bill that overturned a federal court ruling that required the removal of some nonnative species by 2011.
Hunter says he wants the elk kept there so that disabled veterans can hunt there.
Since when do disabled vets have the right to hunt on a national park? If anything, we should open hunting season in Washington D.C. to thin the republican herd a bit.
Over at Huffington Post there's an article about Chuck Schumer and the strategy of running moderate Democrats. (Read it, it has some decent points.) The problem with Pachacutec's idea is that it won't push the country back to the left, essential if we're going to save this country. The strategy we need to follow is to run as liberal candidates as can be elected. In Tennessee this means the pro-life, anti-gun control Harold Ford, while in San Fransisco you could probably elect an Hispanic, lesbian Buddhist who smokes pot. Gradually we can increase peoples' tolerance for more liberal candidates, and elect more radical politicians. My two, badly articulated cents.
You all know that Democrats won the House and, now, one of Allen's aides says that Allen will concede tomorrow afternoon. This means that Bush is now a complete lame duck. He's already bowed to pressure to fire Rummy.
What does this mean? I would love to say that it's a clear mandate for the Democrats to rule how they want and that America is finally turning back toward the left, but I don't think that's the case. I think that America is just fed up with the war and was willing to take a chance on Democrats to kick the bastards out of office (it doesn't hurt that the homophobic gay ministers/ephebophile Republicans/general perverts were outed just a few weeks before).
That said, Democrats do have a mandate for certain things:
1) End the war. Most of the democrats (like Tester and Webb) that could never have been elected in their conservative states won because they made the war a big issue.
2) Stop ultra-conservative judges. If, god forbid, one of the liberal Justices should die or resign, or another spot open up in the lower courts, Democrats now have the ability to stop them without an unpopular filibuster. Plus, on the most important issues like presidential power and abortion, Democrats are most definitely in the mainstream.
3) Investigate the Bush Crime Family. Something very serious was going on behind the scenes before we went to war in Iraq, and we can finally get to the bottom of it, as long as Democrats have the cojones to start a real investigation.
Today's election day! Well, at least everywhere other than Oregon. We've been voting for a couple weeks now. In the great State of the Slug, everyone votes by mail, and we were 6th in the nation for voter turnout in the last midterm (4th in 2004). We've always had huge voter turnout (80% in the '60s), but we saw a huge spike in the 2000 election. What happened? in '98, we passed a ballot measure that has everyone vote by mail. This a) makes it easy to vote and b) reduces voter fraud. We don't have to worry about those Diebold machines, and every vote has a paper trail.
According to Stephen Keller, an employee of a law firm that represented Diebold, there is a program inserted into the machines that allows the results to be changed at the flip of a switch—and only republican administrations have bought the damn things. I guarantee you that if the Democrats lose the House, it was Diebold that stole the election.
One more prediction: if the Republicans keep the house, there will be riots everywhere. If Allen keeps his seat, there will be riots in Virginia's black community. If Ford loses, there will be riots in the rural areas of Tennessee (or at least very angry rednecks with guns). Majoritywatch.com is predicting a landslide victory for the Dems in the House, and Slate is predicting at least significant gains for them in the Senate. People know that we're winning. They will be angry if we lose. Bush crime family, watch out.
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death. Is this the October surprise Rove was gloating about? Will it work? Why am I asking you?
