Category: politics/law

Vietraq

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote:
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3– United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

Read the rest of the article.

No comment necessary.

Simple majority

“As we fight the war on terror, we must always honor and observe the principles that make our society so unique and worthy of protection. We must be committed to preserving civil rights and civil liberties.”
– Alberto Gonzales

I’m catching up on the news this afternoon, and so am just now reading about Gonzales’s Senate hearings. There doesn’t seem to be a reporter or opinion writer in the world who believes Gonzales should be Attorney General, and yet there has never been any doubt of his confirmation.

Salon quotes Senator Joe Biden as saying, on Thursday, “We’re looking for candor, old buddy. We’re looking for you, when we ask you a question, to give us an answer, which you haven’t done yet. I love you, but you’re not being very candid so far.”

Apparently Gonzales was candid about almost nothing, spent a lot of time being vague, and offered only general reassurance like that quoted above. And, really, who doesn’t know that you at least have to pay lip service to these things?

It sounds like a lot of senators were frustrated that Gonzales wasn’t more candid, but I have to wonder why. Were they expecting him to say, “I think that torture is a good thing, and that we should make a habit of detaining people without probable cause”? Perhaps the greatest testament to his character was that he was vague, rather than lying outright in response to every question.

Barely narrower

The Ohio Recount has been completed, and it dropped Bush’s lead from 118,775 to 118,457 votes. Of course, as the Washington Post points out:

The completion of the recount will not bring an end to questions surrounding the vote in Ohio. A group of voters citing fraud have challenged the election results in the Ohio Supreme Court. The voters, supported by Jesse L. Jackson, have cited irregularities including long lines, a shortage of voting machines in minority precincts and problems with computer equipment.

My understanding is that Congress, or at least Rep Conyers, is still doing some investigation, but if there was election day fraud, I think it’s too late to uncover it.

More on Dover

Sidenote: My apologies if this is incoherent. I’m exhausted. I was going to use this space to tell you about why, but I think that’ll have to wait until after the holiday. In case I forget to post on Saturday, have a very Merry Christmas if you celebrate, and a very good just-another-day if you don’t. And now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast…

According to an attorney for the Dover Area School District, a restraining order is not necessary to prevent the teaching of Intelligent Design in biology classes next month. Of course, none of the articles I’ve found seem to offer any specifics about what’s being taught instead. While I suppose it’s unlikely that Dover biology teachers are the driving force behind this law, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that ID, in some form, was already being taught.

My sophomore 20th century US history class at Red Land High School included three days of lecture (well, argument, since I was in the class) on creationism and its merits, presented in the guise of “learning” about the Scopes Monkey Trial. The thing is, it doesn’t matter so much what the official policy is, or what’s Constitutional or not. For better or worse, teachers are going to manage to work their beliefs into the classroom.

In some ways, I think that’s good. It’s important to learn that people have different views. I also think it’s okay to point out that there are holes in Darwinism. I think, in a class about Christianity, it’d be good to point out that there are a lot of unaccounted for years in Christ’s life. I don’t think we should guard any one idea from criticism simply because we’re afraid of the current alternatives.

My tenth grade history teacher began his Scopes lecture by saying, “In order to believe in evolution, two things are necessary: you must have faith, and you must believe in the spontaneous creation of life.” My hand was in the air. “Uh, isn’t that what’s necessary to believe in creationism?” I got no satisfactory answer, of course, but that didn’t stop him from proceeding to tell us that this proved that creationism was a better model.

While there were elements of truth in his initial statement, holes in one theory are not sufficient evidence that another is true. It seems like this is the entire premise of the ID argument — there is no other science involved. In my mind, this should preclude it from being taught in a science class.

I think it would be cool to offer an Origin Theory class, examining Darwinism, ID, literal biblical creationism, and perhaps creation “theories” from other cultures and religions, too. Kind of a very focused comparative religion class. But not a science class.

As long as we have a government monopoly on education, I’d like to see a wider variety of subjects and perspectives being taught in public schools. The Supreme Court has said that the 14th Amendment gives parents the right to educate their children as they see fit. Provide opportunities for children to receive the right education for them, as they and their parents see it. Don’t force anything.

And especially not in a science class.

Mostly, I’m kicking myself for not raising a bigger stink about that 10th grade “history” teacher.

Prisoner abuse

The ACLU has obtained documents from the FBI relating to the “inhumane interrogation techniques” used on prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo.

Here’s the NYT article.

Here’s the ACLU press release.

I wanted to read the email myself, but it’s been trying to load for a while now and doesn’t seem to be making any progress. But I think it’s very interesting that the ACLU focuses on the possibility that the Prez himself may have authorized some questionable techniques, while the NYT doesn’t really mention that.

Beyond that, well, it’s all so hideous I don’t really have much to say.

Intelligent Design?

Pennsylvania’s School of Creationism

There’s a fine line.

I’m frustrated by my recent inner turmoil about whether or not to be offended by a Menorah at a public function, and then about whether or not to be offended by my own lack of offence. I’m frustrated that we are so PC that we are automatically offended by symbols of the majority holiday, but encouraging (in a vaguely patronizing way) of symbols of minority holidays.

I’m frustrated that we are so adamant about removing anything even vaguely related to religion (especially majority religion) from any institution even vaguely related to government. I dislike our society’s current trend toward “Scientism” over any and all ideas that cannot be explained in a laboratory.

Sometimes I even believe in something that could be described as “intelligent design”, although I doubt it’s something most Christians would recognize as such.

And yet…

In a town only ten miles from mine, they are mandating the teaching of Creationism in high school biology classes. Mostly, I’m appalled.

There’s a fine line. I don’t know where to draw it.

(And as a side note, perhaps this, along with the claim that “45 per cent of Americans believe that humans were created by God in their current form within the past 10,000 years”, could be indicative of an atmosphere in which it is secularists, rather than Christians, who are most eager to loosen restrictions on private schools and vouchers. A natural shift, if “liberal” has anything to do with “liberty”.)

Privacy? What privacy?

Ah, the government. We’ve now got proposals to keep federal records of college students and a refusal by the Bush administration to work on privacy protection for the microchip passports-to-be.

In a bit of good news, the Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge to the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. This, of course, doesn’t mean that they’re supporting ruling, but are declining to hear the case because the folks who filed suit have no standing to do so. If you think about this, you’ll find that no one could possibly have standing to sue to prevent gay marriage. This is true for a number of things, really. Seems silly to criminalize things that don’t harm anyone enough to give them standing before the Supreme Court.

They aren’t perfect, but I kind of like this court. I hate to see what Bush is going to do to it.

Drugs & alcohol

Interesting article in the LA Times about potential disagreement among conservatives as social conservatives and free-market conservatives duke it out. The focus here is on two cases about to be heard by the Supreme Court, one dealing with medical marijuana, the other with the direct shipping of wine to consumers, but it’s certainly an issue with broader implications.

Based on past actions of this court, it looks like the free-market conservatives have the edge here. But as this article points out, in the big cases (eg, US vs Lopez, overturning a federal law prohibiting possession of a gun on school property) it’s been traditionally conservative issues which benefit from restricted federal power. Now, it’s traditionally liberal issues which stand to benefit.

We’ll see.

California Researchin’

The New York Times published an interesting article about California’s new stem cell initiative. I’ve been really excited to see a state doing something like this as a result of federal inaction, but this article draws attention to the potential problems that arise when any government body does anything. Well, the scope of the article isn’t that broad, but it’s what it’s got me thinking about.

I would like to see stem cell research being conducted. My first reaction to anything, though, is that I don’t want to see government spending money, especially on things a large number of people object to on moral grounds (I know, I know, this is not a robust argument). This kind of research apparently doesn’t happen with private funds, though, so it does seem like it’s going to take government dollars. A state ballot initiative is, I think, a great way to address the issue. States can decide whether or not they want to spend money on it, those who do have the opportunity to attract scientists and companies to work on it; those who don’t can pay less taxes.

But it also seems like the further the decision making process is removed from those funding the program (IE, the taxpayers), the less responsible the spending will be. The NYT article makes it sound like the initiative includes safeguards to prevent abuse of the funds, but, of course, only time will tell.

Anyway, I always hear fiscal conservatives and libertarians (including myself) argue that less government intervention leads to more innovation. It doesn’t seem to be true in this case, though — perhaps partly because the drug industry is so well established and profitable. The possibilities seem great enough that this is the kind of thing that should be pursued *somehow*, and it’s frustrating to me that there is no easy answer as to how.