News and Politics

Falwell Endorses Child Abuse

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Via morons.org: Fundamentalist Jerry Falwell recently endorsed child abuse at an anti-gay industry conference…

Speaking at an anti-gay industry conference, Jerry Falwell endorsed child abuse or forcing kids into so called “reparative therapy” programs to “change” their sexual orientation. This type of therapy has been rejected by the American Academy of Pediatrics as harmful. Along with the American Counseling Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the National Association of Social Workers, they released a document in 1999 condemning the practice saying in part, “The most important fact about ‘reparative therapy,’ also sometimes known as ‘conversion’ therapy, is that it is based on an understanding of homosexuality that has been rejected by all the major health and mental health professions…homosexuality is not a mental disorder and thus there is no need for a ‘cure.’…health and mental health professional organizations do not support efforts to change young people’s sexual orientation through ‘reparative therapy’ and have raised serious concerns about its potential to do harm.”

karl vs. carl

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Wil Wheaton says Senator Clinton’s time and energy would be better spent investigating Karl Rove, than Carl Johnson.

Does the mod she’s concerned about actually unlock a feature that’s already built into GTA: San Andreas or does it add a new feature that was not originally built into the game? If it’s the second case, this would set a very dangerous precedent. Someone can come up with a similar mod for almost ANY game. Almost all modern games are data driven, with the actual executable fairly small & generalized and all of the game play specifications & graphics in data files that can be easily changed. A lot of games are written in an interpreted language, so new levels & actions can be added without too much trouble and without patching any machine code. There are already hundreds of mods for The Sims, Doom, Quake, and others which change their appearance or operation.

Payback Time

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From the CNN story. It seems we know the reason why Bush appointed him:

During the dispute over the 2000 presidential election, Roberts was part of a team of Republican lawyers and former Supreme Court law clerks who assisted the Bush-Cheney campaign.

(Via Minipundit)

Sandra Day O'Connor retires

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In a surprise announcement Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and a key swing vote on issues such as abortion and the death penalty, said today she is retiring.

O’Connor, 75, said she expects to leave before the start of the court’s next term in October, or whenever the Senate confirms her successor. There was no immediate word from the White House on who might be nominated to replace O’Connor.

It’s been 11 years since the last opening on the court, one of the longest uninterrupted stretches in history. O’Connor’s decision gives Bush his first opportunity to appoint a justice.

There has been wide speculation that conservative chief justice William Rehnquist, who has been battling cancer, would announce his retirement, but so far he hasn’t.

Since Bush would most likely nominate a right wing extremist, the replacement of a conservative justice such as Rehnquist wouldn’t make an appreciable difference in the Supreme Court’s makeup, but losing a critical moderate swing vote such as O’Connor could be devastating to the social progress we’ve made in the past half century.

Daily Kos posts several things you can do right now:

If you have a blog, please post these action items on your site. If you don’t, e-mail them to your like-minded buddies and relatives.

A church-state solution

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Via MetaFilter: A proposed solution to the separation of church & state issue

The solution I have in mind rests on the basic principle of protecting the liberty of conscience. So long as all citizens have the same right to speak and act free of coercion, no adult should feel threatened or excluded by the symbolic or political speech of others, however much he may disagree with it.

Legal secularists may fear that when facing arguments with religious premises, they have the deck stacked against them. If values evangelicals begin by asserting that God has defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman, then, say the secularists, the conversation about same-sex marriage is over. But in fact, secularists can make arguments of their own, which may be convincing: if the state is going to regulate marriages, shouldn’t they be subject to the same equality requirement as every other law? Some might even go further and ask the evangelicals how they can be so sure that they have correctly identified God’s will on the question. They may discover that few evangelicals treat faith as a conversation stopper, and most consider it just the opposite.

When it comes to religious symbolism, typically some group will ask the state for a display or an acknowledgment of their holiday or tradition — a crèche or a statue, a song or pageant. Invoking Justice O’Connor’s endorsement test, legal secularists ordinarily object that if the state acquiesces, then it is embracing the religious symbol and excluding adherents of other religions. But this interpretation of what state support would mean may not be the best or most natural one. The fact that others have asked for and gotten recognition implies nothing about the exclusion of any religious minority except for the brute fact that it is a religious minority. There is no reason whatever for religious minorities to be shielded from that fact, since there is nothing shameful or inherently disadvantageous in being a religious minority, so long as that minority is not subject to coercion or discrimination.

Take the fact that the government treats Christmas as a national holiday. It would be absurd if Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists felt fundamentally excluded from citizenship by this fact — and I would venture to suggest that very few do. Most Americans are still Christians who celebrate Christmas, and the state acknowledges that fact, just as the culture does through the songs on the radio and the merchandise in the stores. The celebration may not always be deeply religious, but the atmosphere corresponds to the realities of the Christian majority. Just what is threatening to religious minorities about Christians celebrating the holiday or singing carols in school? What, exactly, is the harm in being wished Merry Christmas even if you’re not celebrating? The state has not made Christianity relevant to citizenship nor has it spent taxpayers’ money to advance the cause of the church. It has simply acknowledged the preferences of a majority. Some members of religious minorities may choose to spend December feeling bad that they are not part of the majority culture — but they would have this same problem even if Christmas were not a national holiday, since Christmas would still be all around them. The answer is for them to strengthen their own identities and be proud of who they are, not to insist that the majority give up its own celebration to accommodate them.

Although I’m more or less an atheist, I’m not the least bit offended by public religious displays. In fact I enjoy Christmas displays and join the festivities myself.

I don’t care what someone believes, as long as they don’t try to force me to believe it. Religion is a personal matter. Freedom of religion applies to all religions, not just the favored one. Freedom of religion gives everyone the right to practice their own religion, but doesn’t give anyone the right to proselytize their religion or to force others to abide by their beliefs or morals.

Christians are not under attack as they like to claim. They, like everyone else, are perfectly free to practice their religion as they wish. However, when they try to force others to believe the same, they’re crossing the line.

Hagel: "Iraq could be worse than Vietnam"

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Via Daily Kos:

Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, speaking to veterans back home:

The Bush team sent in too few troops to fight the war leading to today’s chaos and rising deaths of Americans and Iraqis. Terrorists are “pouring in” to Iraq.

Basic living standards are worse than a year ago in Iraq. Civil war is perilously close to erupting there. Allies aren’t helping much. The American public is losing its trust in President Bush’s handling of the conflict.

And Hagel’s deep fear is that it will all plunge into another Vietnam debacle, prompting Congress to force another abrupt pullout as it did in 1975.

“What we don’t want to happen is for this to end up another Vietnam,” Hagel told the legionnaires, “because the consequences would be catastrophic.”

It would be far worse than Vietnam, says Hagel, a twice-wounded veteran of that conflict, which killed 58,000 Americans.

Rumsfield admits it may take as long as 12 years to defeat the insurgents. He said Iraq’s security forces will have to finish the job because American and foreign troops will have left the country by then. … Rumsfeld said he is bracing for even more violence. “We’re not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.”

Meanwhile, Bush says:

Our nation’s mission in Iraq is difficult, and we can expect more tough fighting in the weeks and months ahead. Yet I am confident in the outcome. The Iraqi people are growing in optimism and hope. They understand that the violence is only a part of the reality in Iraq. Each day, Iraqis are exercising new freedoms that they were denied for decades…

1,380

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Oliver Willis: 1380: The number of days that have passed since 3,000 Americans were killed by terrorists under George W. Bush’s watch, without Osama Bin Laden’s capture.
1,365: The number of days between the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the surrender of the Japanese to end World War II.

I feel a draft

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Pentagon recruiters compile detailed files on all U.S. students older than 16

The Defense Department began working Wednesday with a private marketing firm to create a database of all U.S. college students, and high school students between 16 and 18 years old, to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.

The database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade point averages, ethnicity and subjects students are studying.

The data will be managed by BeNow Inc. of Wakefield, Mass., one of many marketing firms that use computers to analyze data to target potential customers based on personal profiles and habits.

“The purpose of the system … is to provide a single central facility within the Department of Defense to compile, process and distribute files of individuals who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service,” according to the program’s official notice.

Some data on high school students already is given to military recruiters in a separate program under provisions of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. Recruiters have been using the information to contact students at home, angering some parents and school districts around the country.

School systems that fail to provide data risk losing federal funds, although individual parents or students can withhold information that would be transferred to the military by their districts.

Under the new system, additional data will be collected from commercial data brokers, state drivers’ license records and other sources, including information already held by the military.

The Pentagon’s statements said that anyone can “opt out” of the system by providing detailed personal information that will be kept in a separate “suppression file.” That file will be matched with the full database regularly to ensure that those who do not wish to be contacted are not, according to the Pentagon.