In his Op-Ed today, Paul Krugman makes perhaps the most forceful argument I have yet seen that the Obama Administration should pursue a full criminal investigation against the Bush Administration. The argument is that besides pushing past all reasonable limits on torture and surveillance, that the Bush folks repeatedly made illegal and dangerous personnel decisions for purely political reasons. Krugman argues that these abuses are tantamount to a direct attack on the Constitution, and that therefore the oath that Obama is about to take mandates that he investigate these crimes no matter the political consequences.
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Jan 162009
Jan 152009
I’m an atheist. But I’m a live and let live atheist. I respect your faith, and in return merely ask that you respect my lack thereof. So, I get frustrated when I read things like this. Here’s an atheist who wants to prevent somebody else from expressing religious faith.
Now that’s just the sort of thing that makes the rest of us look bad. Turns out that you don’t have to have a faith to be intolerant of other faiths. It’s plain and simple – Obama isn’t forcing you to pray, and so you’ve got no cause for complaint. If the law were that you had to pray to attain office, that would be a problem. That’s not the case here.
This is why atheists get the (usually unwarranted) reputation as anti-religion crusaders. Its rather tragic, really.
It’s past time to forget about the past, at least where the Middle East Conflict is concerned.
Of course, just by saying that, I’ve alienated 1/3 of people, 1/3 of people think I’m hopelessly naive, and 1/3 of people are saying “right on!”. But whichever category you fall in, hear me out.
In any conflict, it’s easy to get bogged down in the religious rhetoric, the historical tragedy, and the blame game. Especially in Palestine, where it’s easy to forget that anything else exists.
But at the heart of this conflict, the issues aren’t nearly so complex as they first seem. Continue reading »
Jan 132009
The NFL lost one of it’s greatest coaches yesterday, as Colts coach Tony Dungy retired. Dungy ought to be a sure-fire Hall of Fame coach–but I’ll get to that in a moment. What really sets Dungy apart is his quality as a human being. You didn’t have to be told that Dungy was a man who loved his neighbor. All you needed to do was watch him. He didn’t yell, scream, and jump up and down at officials or at his players. He talked to them. He spoke about his opponents with the utmost respect–and more often than not, that respect was reciprocated. Dungy was a man of faith, a man of God. He never hid that fact–often speaking openly about his faith–but you’d know without him saying anything. It was plainly clear by the love he showed to everyone around him.
Now, about those Hall of Fame credentials. Continue reading »
Jan 132009
Sitting here I am appreciating a quiet, pristine moment of bittersweet pride in being an American. My husband is talking football with his friend on the phone and I just saw this posted on the front page of the NY Times:
Obama Set to Issue Order Next Week Closing Guantánamo
I pointed the article out to my husband, he smiled, and he kept on talking.
After years of disappointment that American justice would allow these things to happen, and after years of Americans failing to pull together to make things right, I get to quietly watch as this weird awkward clumsy thing we call democracy starts to make things right. God bless America. God bless everyone.
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