1 Boring Old Man

In the Ocoee Gorge north of here, the road runs along the river offering some spectacular mountain scenery. Sometimes there are signs saying “falling rock.” As a kid, I thought it was a town named Falling Rock. Well, it’s something else…”

Accused 9/11 defendants to be tried in N.Y. court
Washington Post
By Peter Finn, Carrie Johnson and Debbi Wilgoren
November 13, 2009

Khalid Sheik Mohammed — the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks – and four co-defendants will be tried in federal court in New York instead of a military commission, with prosecutors likely to seek the death penalty, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Friday. The long-awaited decision, part of President Obama’s quest to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sparked immediate outrage from Republican lawmakers, who said military commissions are a more secure and appropriate place to try suspected terrorists. But the announcement drew praise from civil rights advocates, who argue that the detainees’ civil rights have been violated by years of detention without trial and the use of military commissions. "Our nation has had no higher priority than bringing those who planned and carried out the attack to justice," Holder said.

He said the detainees will be transferred to the United States after all legal requirements, including a 45-day notice and report to Congress are fulfilled, and after state and local authorities have been consulted. They will be housed in maximum-security units in New York that have held other terrorism suspects. Once federal charges are filed against the five men, military charges now pending against them will be withdrawn.

"They’ll be charged for what we believe they did, and that is to mastermind and carry out the 9/11 attacks," Holder said of the five defendants. "For over 200 years, our nation has relied on a faithful adherence to the rule of law to bring criminals to justice and provide accountability to victims," Holder said. "Once again we will ask our legal system to rise to that challenge, and I am confident it will answer the call with fairness and justice"…

I’m skipping all the editorializing and blogging that is flying back and forth on this topic because it doesn’t matter. The only reason it’s a debate topic is that we’ve gotten so used to making up our government on the fly in these last eight years that we’re having trouble stopping. We seemed to have all but forgotten that the law has a long history, and that the reason we have a historical precedent system is to keep us from getting all caught up in the moment and making up what we do to fit the case in front of us. The dangers in doing that are obvious.

An Argument in Defense of the Serial Comma
The Friendly Atheist
by Hemant Mehta

A serial comma is the comma you use before the last item in a series of three or more things. With the serial comma:

I went to the store to buy oatmeal, milk, and cookies.

Without the serial comma:

I went to the store to buy oatmeal, milk and cookies.

There are arguments to be made for and against it. Why do I bring this up? There’s an article by Jay Lindsay of the Associated Press called “Evangelists target spiritually cold New England” making the rounds. There’s nothing overly special about the piece — the headline summarizes it well enough. But reader Jon brings it to my attention because of the comma issue. Here’s a direct quotation from the piece. The lack of a serial comma gives it an entirely different [and very entertaining] meaning:

They say a reason for the region’s hollowed-out faith is a pervasive theology that departs from traditional Biblical interpretation on issues such as the divinity of Jesus, the exclusivity of Christianity as a path to salvation and homosexuality.

Jon points out:

I’m pretty sure there are other paths to homosexuality besides Christianity.

Sentence of 13 Years for Ex-Louisiana Congressman
New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
November 13, 2009

Former Representative William J. Jefferson, a New Orleans Democrat whose political career once seemed to hold high promise, was sentenced on Friday to 13 years in prison for using his office to try to enrich himself and his relatives…

Jury Prepares for Jefferson Bribery Case
New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS
July 29, 2009

Former Representative William J. Jefferson put his office up for sale and intended to get “top dollar for it,” prosecutors said Wednesday in closing arguments at his corruption trial…

Rebeca Bellows, a federal prosecutor, told the jury on Wednesday that Mr. Jefferson “year after year, scheme after scheme, betrayed the trust of the people of New Orleans.” She noted that witnesses had testified during the trial that Mr. Jefferson regularly increased the amount of kickbacks he was demanding. He was greedy, she said…

Exhibits in Jefferson trial reveal payments to daughters’ colleges
nola.com
By Dinah Rogers
June 10, 2009

… The prosecution’s case will depend heavily on hours of secretly recorded tapes of Jefferson talking to Lori Mody, a Virginia businesswoman who went to the FBI with her suspicions about what Jefferson was doing, and ended up wearing a wire.

In the transcript of a conversation taped June 17, 2005, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, Jefferson explained to Mody how ANJ was named for his wife and children. The "A, " he explained, stood for Andrea, his wife, and daughter Akilah. The "N" was for his daughter Nailah. And the "J" was for his three eldest daughters: Jamila, Jalila and Jelani.

"Before I started paying for tuition, I wasn’t poor, " Jefferson told Mody. "But now I’m kind of poor."

"Now it’ll be flowing in, " Mody said.

Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock and Jelani Jefferson Exum are all graduates of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where their father, who grew up in Lake Providence, one of the poorest patches in America, received his law degree. Jefferson’s fourth daughter, Nailah Jefferson, a documentary filmmaker, is a graduate of Boston University and Emerson College. His fifth daughter, Akilah Jefferson, is a graduate of Brown University and now a student at Tulane University School of Medicine…

Official: Obama rejects all Afghan war options
President seeks clarity on turnover to Afghan government, official says
AP
November 12, 2009

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday. That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.

In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Obama is still close to announcing his revamped war strategy — most likely shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends on Nov. 19.

But the president raised questions at a war council meeting Wednesday that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama’s thinking…

Outrage! GOP won’t join in Ft. Hood moment of silence!
Daily KOS
by David Waldman
Nov 11, 2009

When Sen. Bob Menendez [D-NJ] convened a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development yesterday, he asked everyone to join him in a moment of silence for the victims of the Ft. Hood shootings, and not a single Republican would join him!

Of course, that’s probably because there wasn’t a single Republican in attendance. And why wasn’t there a single Republican in attendance, as near as I can make out at any point, throughout the two hours during which the committee sat? Probably because of the subject of the hearing: Ending Veterans’ Homelessness

Republicans, we know from Bill O’Reilly, do not believe there is such a thing as a homeless veteran. So they won’t sit still for a hearing on something as absurd as that, nevermind that it was the day before Veterans’ Day. Watch the archived footage of the hearing for yourself, and see if you can spot so much as a scrap of paper on the table where the Republicans are supposed to be…

Under Pressure From Tea Party Activists,

Charleston GOP Censures Lindsey Graham For Bipartisanship
ThinkProgress
November 11, 2009

On Monday, the Charleston County Republican Party’s executive committee “took the unusual step” of officially censuring Sen. Lindsey Graham [R-SC]. The local GOP committee admonished Graham for stepping across party lines to work with Sen. John Kerry [D-MA] on a bipartisan clean energy bill and other pieces of legislation. The censure stated that Graham’s “bipartisanship continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom.”

Part of the fury from the right against Graham is being spurred by the oil and coal industry. The oil company front group American Energy Alliance has blanketed South Carolina with ads smearing Graham for seeking to address climate change.

The pressure against Graham has also stemmed from his criticism of hate radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck. “Only in America can you make that much money crying,” said Graham, mocking Beck in early October. Beck has responded with a slime campaign against Graham that he typically reserves for liberals. The leader of the Charleston Republican Party, Lin Bennett, is also a member of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 organization in South Carolina. According to its website, the Charleston GOP claims to work closely with tea party groups and Beck’s 9/12 activists in selecting its favored candidates.

Will Graham be able to stand up to the angry backlash being cultivated by far right voices and entrenched corporations interests? At a Graham town hall in Greenville last month, activist Harry Kimball of “RINO HUNT” protested by constructing a display that portrayed Graham, as well as other GOP moderates, being flushed down a toilet:

KIMBALL: This is for every RINO who has failed to represent us. […] [the toilet represents] flushing them, flushing them.

Graham’s spokesman defended his boss to reporters yesterday, claiming the senator has a “90 percent conservative voting record.” Unfortunately for Graham, that may not prevent him from being “Scozzafavaed.”

I alternate between being terrified that this circus act will engage the voters, now disgruntled with our economic woes, and convinced that America has a majority of responsible, thoughtful citizens that will see this kind of lunacy in a clear light.

Obama, Liberals Blame Everything But Islam for the Ft. Hood Shooting

Our military, selfishness, cynicism, guns… but not Islam.

Some years back, I heard a seminar presentation entitled, Psychoanalysis and Religion: Is there a meet? given by a colleague who is both a Professor in the Seminary and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. I knew him primarily as a talented therapist, and I wondered what he would talk about. It didn’t seem like a real question to me, since he was himself the answer to the question – one foot firmly planted in each place. After cataloging the myriad of goals the two disciplines shared, he finally got around to his point. Religion, he said, has to deal with sin. Psychoanalysis does not.

I had never really considered that distinction before. The people who present themselves for psychotherapy are hardly criminals. They are generally functional people, often highly functional, but have longstanding psychological tangles that interfere with happiness and a full life. While those tangles may have lead them to "sin," their infractions were usually in the "venial" category. So psychotherapists don’t know much about criminals [who rarely come to our offices]. If anything, we deal with people who feel too much guilt rather than not enough.

But that presentation must’ve been a good one because the question it raised lingered to the present – the part about sin. After the talk, I thought that religion’s preoccupation with sin was leftover from an earlier time in history when morality was in the hands of the church – that now we have laws that govern "sin" which I was equating with "crime." But that was a naive notion. I had missed the depth of the issue he was raising. From the religious point of view, there is an absolute "right" and an absolute "wrong" – usually dealt with by laws that come from the deliberations of men or from god. I was settling for the deliberations of man and leaving out the other option, our the concept of another option.

My own childhood religious exposure had imprinted Jesus’ revisions – love god and love your enemies – sort of a golden rule morality. The other Laws like the ten commandments and other biblical injunctions hadn’t made much of an impact on me. But for many, the laws of religion are sacrosanct. And so, the laws derived by men can be seen as having a lesser authority, or in some cases, no authority at all in that frame of reference.

In some places where human science and biblical narrative are widely different, I have no real comment to make. Astronomy, geology, natural sciences such as paleontology or anthropology are fascinating and poke grand holes in the concrete biblical narrative. In my way of thinking, that’s no threat to religion at all. Those ancient texts were created long ago by people filled with wonder at our universe. That wonder remains, but is simply more refined. I have no more trouble with the biblical creation stories than I have with the Cherokee Myths or the Tibetan cosmology. If people want to take those things concretely, it’s fine by me. It has no effect on my life or on those around me. My only complaint would be if they tried to restrict my child’s exposure to the fascinating modern sciences. This is not about sin, rather it’s about opinion.

My first take after the compromise in the health care reform bill was that it was okay with me if people who don’t believe in abortion don’t want to pay for abortions. We should finance it privately. That could be done easily. I stand by that position. But that’s not all the opponents want. They want to outlaw abortion again – criminalize it again.

"… to understand a message of faith, a message of salvation, the centrality of the cross in this whole fight… I am tired of secular fanatics trying to redesign America in their image. I believe the most important question in the United States for the next decade is: ‘Who are we?’ Are we in fact a people who claim that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights? Or, are we just randomly gathered protoplasm — and lucky for us we’re not rhinoceroses — but that in the end our power is defined by politicians and their appointees? Once you decide on this, almost everything else gets easier."

So I’m back to my colleague’s talk and his assertion that religion has to deal with sin. We just watched what happens when religious law supersedes our own laws. It’s not enough to say that Major Hasan was crazy when he opened fire at Fort Hood, or that he misinterpreted the religious law of his religion, because all religious law is interpreted. There is no direct communication of god’s law. Only myths – Moses and the ten commandments, Mohamed and the revelations in the caves near Mecca, whatever drove King James’ scribes. The Religious Right is actually proposing that America replace the concept of crime with the concept of sin, and apply those standards to everyone.

Newt and his new best friends [the Religious Right] miss the essential and obvious meaning of, "... we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights." They think that the use of the term creator means we are a Christian Nation and a de facto Theocracy. What they miss is the real essence of our founding – that we are given certain unalienable rights. He is proposing that "that in the end our power is defined by politicians and their appointees" while evading the fact that in a theocracy, "… power is defined by politicians and their appointees" – the ones that interpret god’s absolute law.