North Carolina Republicans have been speaking out against House Speaker Jim Black recently, trying to convince voters that they’re a better alternative to his corruption. I agree that Black should have resigned a long time ago. However, if past history is any guide, putting Republicans into office isn’t going to do much to stem corruption in the long term.
Examining the idea of “Bush Derangement Syndrome“, Lex takes a look at why the President has engendered such strong feelings in his opposition.
As I mentioned in the comments there, when taken individually, it’s all too easy to shrug off some of the administration’s affronts to our values, but when they’re all lined up, one after the other, they point in a frightening direction.
Jason Rosenhouse explains a few easy ways to spot bogus Intelligent Design arguments.
Anti-evolutionists are skillful at burying the weaknesses of their arguments beneath a wealth of scientific jargon. This presents a problem for fair-minded non-scientists trying to determine where reality lies. If rivals in a debate make differing claims about the relationship between thermodynamics and evolution, for example, how is someone unversed in physics to know who is presenting things accurately?
…The good news is that much of the creationist fog can be dispersed via some basic understanding of how the scientific community operates. Many, indeed most, anti-evolution arguments should provoke suspicion even among those without training in science.
He goes on to list four ways to tell when an argument is probably on less-than-solid footing. Read the whole article at CSICOP’s Creation and Intelligent Design Watch website.
Earlier this summer, Guilford County enacted a 90 day moratorium on economic incentives to businesses.
I can understand wanting to be cautious and prudent about giving away taxpayers’ money – as a taxpayer, I definitely appreciate that. But declaring outright that no one is getting incentives seems like a foolish way to go, and a quick way to put us at a disadvantage for attracting businesses to the area.
At first, I was ambivalent. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that the portrait of Jesus hanging in a West Virginia high school hallway should probably be taken down. The problem is not religion, or Jesus, or pictures of Jesus. The problem is government endorsement of a specific religion. A recent letter to the editor and a news article only strengthened this feeling.
The letter appeared in the News and Record this weekend. The writer says:
The American Civil Liberties Union wants Bridgeport High School in Bridgeport, W. Va., to take down the painting of Jesus which hangs in the main hallway. Are they afraid that some student might see the picture and wonder who this Jesus is?
Or even worse, maybe some student might even start to believe in Jesus and His gift of forgiveness and eternal life in paradise.
As I said in the comments, the letter highlights the exact reason why the picture shouldn’t be in the school hallway – a government entity should not be promoting a specific religion. A child may very well be influenced by the picture (doubtful, in my opinion, but the letter writer seems to think it’s possible), and while that in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it is certainly not a public school’s job to try to direct the religion of its students. I wonder if the author of the letter would feel the same way if rather than portraying Jesus, it was a picture of Mohammed, or Buddha, or L. Ron Hubbard? If that were the case, I would guess that he might be a little more concerned about any possible influence the picture might have.
There was also an article today about the situation in The Times West Virginian. A good chunk of the article is spent profiling the Alliance Defense Fund, the group that is defending the school in this case. Unfortunately, the article’s author uncritically parrots a bunch of anti-ACLU rhetoric straight from the ADF website without giving space for a response from the ACLU. But the more interesting and relevant parts are some of the comments from Mike Queen, one of the school board members.
The painting is a print of artist Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ.” It has been hanging outside the principal’s office for about 37 years. Various stories about how the painting came to be exhibited in the hallway leading to the principal’s office are circulating. One of the tasks for lawyers on both sides will be to research its history at the school.
Queen said he’s heard that school officials at the time took the picture out of a counselor’s office to hide some graffiti that had been scrawled on the wall. The students back then had defaced a portrait of the high school principal, according to this tale, Queen said.
In any event, “The picture wasn’t put up for a religious reason,” he said.
So the picture’s presence is allegedly not religiously motivated. However, Queen then says this:
The complaining parents “have a right to bring this lawsuit.”
“But we Christians have a right to defend ourselves, too.”
“I’m a Christian. I respect all religions, and I want others to respect me as much as I respect them and their religion,” he said.
“I’m getting tired of feeling like I have to apologize for being a Christian. I really do. Why can’t other people respect my religion?”
This seems contradictory, to put it mildly. If the picture’s purpose for hanging in the hallway has nothing to do with religion, how is it disrespectful of Queen’s religion to request that it be taken down?
Some of the backstory is interesting too:
Other parents and students have also complained over the years about the display of the portrait, supporters of its removal state.
School officials even took to hiding the portrait when the school was inspected by outside Blue Ribbon Schools panels.
[School Superintendent] Dr. [Carl] Friebel himself took the portrait down about five years ago in response to complaints about it, the suit claims.
“Within days, however, the school board insisted that Friebel restore it to the school,” the suit states.
“Obeying the board’s directive, Friebel had the portrait returned to the wall outside the principal’s office,” the complaint says.
So the school superintendent actually did take the portrait down at one point, but the school board – officials who presumably don’t even work directly in the location where the picture was hung – insisted that it be replaced. The school board was in essence requiring that this picture be hung in the school hallway. Yet Queen, one of those board members, would have us believe that it’s his liberty that is being infringed upon.
At the moment, in the Latest News section of CNN’s website, one of the headlines reads:
“Airport X ray shows everything, yes everything”
The fifth headline after this reads:
“Report: X-ray devices don’t see explosives in shoes”
In the wake of last week’s foiled terrorist plot, I blogged that a law enforcement approach seems to be a very effective method of dealing with the threats posed by terrorism. In his column today, George Will comes to a similar conclusion:
The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.” The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.
Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry’s belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that “many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror.” In a candidates’ debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be “occasionally military,” it is “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world.”
It’s good to see that there are sensible conservatives coming around to this view; it’s sad that Kerry was mocked for it when he originally expressed it. Even now, some folks in the current administration (to say nothing of some of the rank-and-file Republicans) still don’t get it:
Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a “senior administration official,” insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:
“The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren’t for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It’s like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn’t work.”
This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike “the law enforcement approach,” does “work.”
Guilford County has had quite a large number of rabies cases reported this year – 18 as of last week. Unfortunately, Guilford County Animal Control has been less than helpful.
The Department of Homeland Security updated our threat level yesterday:
August 11, 2006 – The United States Government has raised the nation’s threat level for the aviation sector to:
- Code Red or Severe for flights originating in the United Kingdom bound for the United States
- Code Orange or High for all commercial aviation operating in or destined for the United States.
- The rest of the country remains at Code Yellow.
Currently, there is no indication of plotting within the United States. We believe the arrests of extremists engaged in a substantial plot to destroy multiple passenger aircraft flying from the United Kingdom to the United States have significantly disrupted the threat, but we cannot be sure that the threat has been entirely eliminated or the plot completely thwarted.
Question: If the bombing plot was not “significantly disrupted” – say more than half of the plotters were still on the loose – what would the threat level be, considering that it’s at red now? What about if attacks are actually carried out on UK to US flights next week – what will they set the threat level to then?
Will they add a “Super Dooper Severe” threat level, maybe with a color of purple? If not, then how reasonable is it that the level is currently set to red?
A terrorist plot to blow up passenger jets was thwarted by British authorities this week. It sounds like they did a great job, arresting a large portion of the people involved. And in this case, the threat seems to have been much more real than in some of the more recent terrorist arrests.
However, the nature of the plot and its downfall leads to two points:
1. The notion of “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” doesn’t seem to be working out too well.
2. This is a significant, tangible victory against terrorists, and it comes as a result not of military action, but of the work of law enforcement agencies. There are circumstances where the military will be needed to fight against terrorists (the action in Afghanistan after 9/11, for instance), but in my opinion the most notable, undisputable victories – such as this one – are more likely to come from law enforcement activities.
24 alleged terrorists are now out of action. There was no collateral damage. This is a solid gain – there’s virtually no chance that these arrests have caused any resentment among third parties who might want to now turn to terrorism themselves as a result. We haven’t made any new enemies by reducing someone’s home to rubble. Military action has its place, to be sure, but we may need to rethink the nature of its role in the fight against terrorists.
