While the piggies are at the trough...

So, the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi were up in Washington, DC today. They were testifying before Congress about the response to Hurricane Katrina, and specifically the federal government's response.

They talked about the devastation, they talked about how the hurricane will impact their states' economies for years to come. They asked for money to help encourage corporations to return to Louisiana and Mississippi after the clean-up is finished.

You knew it was only a matter of time before non-recovery funding was sought. But financial incentives to try and retain the companies forced to leave the area are one thing. And they're almost acceptable. It's other things that they want money for that's a bit more troubling. Money for alligator farms. Price supports for the sugar industry. Carnival Cruise Lines got a no-bid contract to lease a ship to FEMA. And the oil companies want a bailout similar to that which the airlines received in the wake of 11 September 2001.

I knew at the time that the airline bailout was a bad idea because of how it was going to encourage other industries to seek similiar bailouts like the oil companies (who have made record profits as a result of the price spikes, no matter what they'll tell Congress in trying to get the bailouts) are currently doing. But that's another rant from 4 years in the past.

So, we have all of these people going to Washington to tell the Congress what went wrong in response to Katrina. And while they're near the trough, they're asking for a chance to gorge themselves on the public's money. Sweet, sweet pork, just like the Bridge to Nowhere, which is supposed to be acceptable now, because it's Katrina-stricken areas that are after the bacon.

Pork is pork, no matter who's eating it. Alligator farms are no better of a use of public funds than a Bridge to Nowhere.

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And there's been a new development in the prisoner abuse cases. A captain, who graduated from West Point and is the winner of two Bronze Stars, is going public with allegations that he attempted to make the Pentagon aware of systemic prisoner abuse. He's claiming that it wasn't limited to "a few bad apples" at Abu Ghraib, but that it carried out by most of the guards, and at multiple prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After taking his concerns to the Pentagon, he claims that no actions were taken and at least some of the abuses were approved of, and condoned by, the chain of command. He's now taking his concerns to groups such as Human Rights Watch, and to senators, in an effort to bring them to light.

We'll see how far his allegations get, or if they'll simply be swept under the rug as similar allegations in the past have been.

"But he seems like a nice fella!"

The cost of "nice":

A $230 billion budgetary surplus in 2000 is now a $412.6 billion deficit.

An ignored briefing while on vacation leads to over 3,217 dead in terrorist attacks on the US and the subsequent military action. The financial costs are over $100 billion in clean-up and reconstruction costs, plus military funding.

A birthday party in Arizona and appearances in California lead to ignoring a natural disaster developing in the Gulf of Mexico region. Over 1,069 dead (as of 21 September 2005), over 2,576 missing and $ 60 billion pledged to clean-up a situation that could have been mitigated by not cutting funding for levee improvements.

A family score to settle leads to 2,107 dead coalition troops and at least 10,000 citizens of Iraq. Over $275 billion in military spending.

"Nice" has cost the US, and the world.

Electing a guy that you could see as "a drinking buddy" or "a good neighbour" has led to nearly 16,500 dead people and over $400 billion in extra spending, in addition to another $640 billion lost from federal coffers.

The cost of "nice" is a small suburb's worth of people and a trillion dollars. And that's not so "nice".

I know that many of the Christians among you aren't going to like this...

...but Michael Newdow is in the right.

Yes, I know that this throws me in the vast minority in this country. Yes, I realize that if you polled the American public on whether or not the Pledge of Allegiance is "constitutional" about 80% would say that it is. I am aware that this is a nation where the majority of the public are Christian. But let us get one thing straight from from the outset; the United States of America is not a federation of Christian states. That's right, this is not a Christian nation. If you have any difficulty in understanding why this is not a Christian nation (nor is it a Jewish nation, a Moslem nation, a Buddhist nation nor a Sikh nation, and so on), I suggest you find a copy of the Constitution, with its amendments, and read that first amendment.

Do you see that bit about "mak(ing) no law respecting the establishment of religion"? We see that, right? Well, when you make a law in 1954 which alters the existing Pledge of Allegiance to read that we're "one nation, under God," this means that the Congress has declared a particular religious bent that is over this nation. This would be a monotheistic religious tradition that refers to their deity as "God". It could be Christian, it could be Judaism, possibly even Islam. However, that means the flag isn't a symbol of a nation under Zeus, under Shiva, under Osirus; but under God. This is a very specific religion or group of religions.

Let's go further, to the specific case in question. It deals with a law in the state of California that requires school children to recite this promise to ally themselves to the flag this nation that is under God. Now this is not the law in Ohio, appearant, as I had Jehovah's Witness classmates who were not required to recite the Pledge, though they were required to stand for it. But the point is that you're asking kids who do not believe in God to make an oath to the flag of a Christian nation (as defined by the words that Congress added into the Pledge in 1954).

Yes, these children, and their families, are a vast minority in this country. However, and this is very important, our country was designed to protect the rights of the minority. When the Pilgrims loaded up onto the Mayflower in the summer of 1620 and embarked on their journey across the Atlantic, they did so because they were a religious minority in England. They believed that the Church of England was a corrupt body headed by a corrupt monarch. They wanted to "purify" the church by removing the hierarchical control that went from priest to bishop to the Archbishop of Canterbury to the King/Queen of England. This is why they were called "Puritans". And to ensure that this group remained a vast minority in England, the monarchs stated that any heresy (meaning any worship that was not Church of England rite) was punishable by death. This minority had to worship in secret, and they had to move their meeting places around in order to avoid detection. Finally they were able to pool the money needed to flee England in search of religious freedom.

And the Puritans/Pilgrims were not the only religious minority that fled from England for religious freedom. There were also the English Catholics, who lost any chance that Catholicism would be re-established in England with the establishment of the Stuart dynasty. Later, there were the Quakers, who fled to Penn's colony. Scottish Calvinist and Knoxists fled to Virginia. French Protestants fled to South Carolina in the wake of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. These minorities came to the British colonies in the Americas because the monarch didn't care about their heresies being committed over here; it was so much "out of sight, out of mind." And when the colonies achieved their independence 150 years later, they realized that it was because of their ancestors being in the minority, and their ancestors' persecution, that the rights of the religious minorities needed to be protected.

Sure, in 1788 the "Founding Fathers" may not have anticipated Chinese Buddhists or Indian Hindis living within their nation. There were Jews who were here, however. Some of them helped to finance the Revolution, even. And even though though they could have created a nation that respected God as the ultimate authority in this nation without stepping on the toes of any of the colonists, Christians or Jews, they chose not to. And these were people who believed that their belief in a single God separated them from the "savage" native Americans. Yet they protected their rights to be polytheists by not establishing the United States as a monotheist nation "under God".

The ultimate irony in this all is that when Iraq wanted to include language in their constitution that would recognize Islam as the basis of their laws, many Americans bristled at the thought. Many US citizens (rightly) oppose the establishment of Sharia law in Iraq and elsewhere. Yet when it comes to supporting something that clearly proclaims the United States as "one nation, under God," they have no problem dragging out the "but we're a Christian nation," argument; as if that is any different from recognizing Islam as the basis of your nation's laws in your constitution. It's yet another case of US citizens asking the world to do one thing (not establish Islam as the state religion, nor recognize the influence of Islam on the laws of the nation) and doing the opposite (recognizing the US as "one nation, under God").

Michael Newdow isn't just standing up for the rights of atheists to be free of religion in the public sphere. He's also standing up for the rights of Hindis, Buddhists, and believers in a multitude of other religious traditions from making a declaration that they are allied to a flag and a nation under a God in whom they do not believe. Some of us who hold different beliefs do not mind making such a declaration because we don't believe that our dieties will hold these false declarations against us, while others feel that their deities will, and it is for their protection that those two words added in 1954 must be struck down. Otherwise we may as well hang a sign on the nation that reads, "only Christians need apply" and alter the words of Emma Lazarus to read, "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled Christian masses, yearning to breathe free of godlessness."

Hollow apologies are meaningless

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

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Why do I take the above to be read as "response to floods and storms is a state responsibility, and to the extent that we were too slow in recognizing how incompetant the state and the city were, I take responsibility; which is to say that I take no responsibility at all."

[adding to my original post]

Why do I take the president's statement in that way? Well, how many times in the last couple of weeks have we heard the administration's officials talking about how they weren't called in by the state or the city, or other attempts to shift blame to those bodies? That's why. Because if you're shifting that blame saying "it's not our responsibility", then it's pretty damned hollow for you to come forth and say that you are responsible, for as far as you believe that the mistakes made were your fault. Considering they've been saying for the last two weeks that it wasn't their fault, that it wasn't their purview, it's pretty obvious that the president doesn't feel that the failures were the fault of the federal government. So it's really easily to apologize for mistakes that were made by the federal government and take responsibility for them when you don't believe that there were mistakes to be responsible for.

And yet the "liberal" media are falling all over themselves today talking about how Bush has finally taken responsibility and said he made a mistake about something. No, he did not, you fools. Read between the lines. Take into account the words and the actions administration in the last two weeks. He made the "admission" because he doesn't believe there's any blame to be shouldering. It wasn't a noble admission, finally, that he's capable of making mistakes.

We divert you from your regularly schedule hurricane-related kvetching

To bring to light something a bit more important...the Supreme Court.

Over the weekend, Chief Justice Rehnquist died. While I'm no great fan of the man, I don't have the same sort of near-joy that some people I've seen express. Of the "conservative wing" of the Court, he was the most decent. Unlike Scalia and Thomas, he actually seemed to hold a more traditionally conservative line. While I don't necessarily agree with that, he was consistant, and you could understand the reasoning behind his rulings. With Scalia (and to a lesser extent, Thomas) it has seemed that whatever suited his buddies in the corporate boardrooms was what he believed.

When Sandra Day O'Connor resigned earlier this summer and John Roberts was appointed to fill her spot, I was less than pleased. The man has a bit of a history as an ideologue when he worked in the Reagan Justice Department. However, in private practice he seemed to temper that with representing some more liberal clients. But his record on the DC Court of Appeals (to which he was appointed in 2003) has been such that it's hard to see him being anything like acceptable. After all, he upheld the sentencing of a 12-year old girl to juvenile detention for eating a couple of fries on a DC Metro platform; an offense that usually earns an adult a citation, if anything.

Now Bush has decided, less than two days after the Chief Justice has passed, to redirect Roberts's nomination from the associate justice slot to the Chief Justice opening. I predicted this just hours before it happened, and so I was not terribly shocked. I'd heard some grumblings about this possibility, and as much as I'd hoped they were wrong, I knew it was likely. Why?

A) Bush has seemed to be wanting to fill the seat before the new term begins in one month. Since Roberts was about to begin the confirmation process for associate justice, it would simply be a matter of changing that position that he was about to be confirmed for, but the hearings would be able to proceed as they'd been scheduled (only put off a few days while Rehnquist's funeral takes place this week). And with Justice O'Connor saying she would stay on until her replacement had been confirmed, it was more urgent to fill the Chief Justice slot.

B) To fill the CJ slot with someone else would have required vetting more candidates from the list that the president had prepared two months ago. Sure, one could argue that most of those candidates should have already been vetted before the last appointment, and the president could easily say that a thorough vetting was unnecessary. On the other hand, it would take time away from the president's renewed attempts to make it appear as if he is doing something about the flooding and other aftermath in New Orleans. As if the nation wouldn't understand his needing to attend to the Supreme Court vacancy. But it's all about the PR with Bush; and with last Friday's visit to the disaster zone having been a complete and total failure, he's asking for a do-over.

Why this bothers me is this; the CJ slot is not just another bench vacancy to be filled, and that's exactly how Bush is treating it. The Chief Justice is the head of the court. He presides over the sessions, which allows him to decide who gets to ask questions when, and for how long during arguments. This isn't to say that it would have been any better had Bush elevated Scalia. In fact, it could very well have been worse. But he's treating the seat as if it were just any other seat on that august bench.

Also, we're almost certain to have a justice on the bench who will be replaced mid-term. Any case that is argued prior to confirmation of a new justice, but has its decision released afterwards, means that O'Connor's vote in the decision is moot. This could lead to a number of 4-4 ties in which she would be the swing vote; and when a Supreme Court case is subject to a tie vote, the Chief Justice breaks the tie. Roberts would also be the youngest Chief Justice since John Marshall, who lead the court for 34 years.

And none of this takes into consideration his stances on the issues likely to come before the Court. It's simply a matter of looking at how the president's laziness can have a lasting impact on this country. I'd feel better about this is Scalia were the nominee, and I disagree with him far more than I do with Roberts (who I do disagree with on 9/10ths of the opinions and briefs I read, mind you).

It really bothers me that Bush is unwilling to give this most important judicial seat in our nation the due consideration it deserves. And it seems that he may be willing to provoke conflict with Senate Democrats along the lines of "but you had no problem with him replacing O'Connor", should they object, again equating an associate justice's seat with the Chief Justice's seat.

So, once again, this country is being put at the mercy of a lazy, detached, bungling chief executive. God save the United States of America.

[edit - 7 Sep 2005, 9:05 p.m.] - In the interests of full disclosure and maintaining factual accuracy, when I initially wrote this post, I was unsure about what would happen with a 4-4 tie on an issue before the Supreme Court. I looked for the information in a few different places, and I couldn't find it, so I just assumed that the CJ's side prevailed. I found out last night, when I finally got around to watching my recording of Meet the Press, that the lower court ruling prevails in that case. This makes me feel slightly better about the prospect of a 4-4 tie with Roberts at the helm. But that's not saying much. Pardon my error.