Update from the Heartland
No.314
10.12.07 – 16.12.07
Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/
No.314
10.12.07 – 16.12.07
Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/
To all,
Simply . . . may I introduce Butler County, Kansas, Deputy Sheriff Taylor Warden Parlier.
Simply . . . may I introduce Butler County, Kansas, Deputy Sheriff Taylor Warden Parlier.
[Taylor deputy 071210.jpg]
We are proud of you, Son. May God protect you in your service to the community.
Last week, I illuminated William Wilberforce [313]. I did not know until we watched the movie "Amazing Grace" this weekend that the story was of Wilberforce's extraordinary effort to gain the ultimate passage of the Slave Trade Act (25.March.1807) to end British participation in the grim process. The emancipation of slaves in the British Empire did not come until 1.August.1834, after the passage of the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery on the 26th of July. The movie accentuated the relationships with and contributions of Prime Minister William Pitt and Evangelical John Newton, who wrote the lyrics to the classic Christian hymn "Amazing Grace." For those who know the hymn, the final scene of the movie is guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes -- magnificent! Despite valiant efforts and a devastating Civil War, the emancipation of slaves in United States did not come until 1.January.1863, and some would argue true emancipation was not really achieved until 2.July.1964. I highly recommend the movie "Amazing Grace" -- please watch this movie.
The follow-up news items:
-- Voldya Putin, fresh from his Duma electoral success, announced publicly his recommendation for a successor – Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev. Then, no sooner had Putin’s words vanished on the wind, Dmitry proposed that his good buddy Voldya continue his service to Russia as prime minister – ah, the intrigues of Russian politics.
-- You don’t to get to see this from Congress very often . . . on Wednesday, the Senate passed the Fair Treatment for Experienced Pilots Act [PL 110-135; H.R. 4343] by Unanimous Consent (meaning, they did not actually vote, just all agreed to pass it as written), after the House passed the bill the previous day by a vote of 390-0-0-41. The President signed the bill into law the next day; talk about fast service! The new law increases the mandatory retirement age of air carrier (Part 121) pilots from 60 to 65 years. Professional pilots sought this change for many years. Retroactive application is excluded. I am glad Congress finally got around to doing something, but they did not go far enough. To be blunt, this is discrimination based on age and should be eliminated entirely. A pilot’s ability to perform in the cockpit of a multi-crew aircraft should be based on performance criteria including Class I medical and simulator checks.
I identified Nada Nadim Prouty [310] as a name to watch. I did not know but I certainly suspected that Prouty was involved in something bigger. The web I suspected Prouty of being involved in has begun to be partially illuminated. It seems Prouty, whose family name is el-Aouar, has a sister and a former roommate now caught up in the dragnet. Prouty’s former roommate, U.S. Marine Captain Samar Spinelli, AKA Samar Khalil Nabbouh, plead guilty in Detroit to charges of citizenship and passport fraud. These two plus Prouty’s sister, Elfat el Aouar, are believed to have links to a Hezbollah intelligence network operating in the United States. Oh what a tangled web we weave . . . . If you would like to learn about all this, I urge you to read:
“Hezbollah: Signs of a Sophisticated Intelligence Apparatus”
by Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
Published: December 12, 2007; 19:38 GMT
http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/tir.php?utm_source=071212-TIR&utm_medium=email-strat-html&utm_content=071212-TIR-header-read&utm_campaign=TIR
Burton and Stewart said, “In the past, it was thought that only nation states such as Russia or Israel had the potential to send agents into another country to infiltrate their most sensitive government agencies. In this case, it could turn out that a militant group (perhaps with a little help from its Iranian mentors) was able to accomplish this feat. In this case, the agents might not only have penetrated those agencies, but maneuvered themselves into positions and locations of critical importance to Hezbollah and the Iranians. It would be quite a coup for Hezbollah to pull off such a feat while the United States and Iran were in the midst of a covert intelligence war.” While the authors hint at an espionage exposure comparable to Robert Hanssen, I have a very hard time making that connection. You will recall that FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen was a senior Bureau counter-intelligence specialist who betrayed countless American, Russian and other agents. Regardless, the Prouty network will continue to unravel, and the signs of the global nature of the War on Islamic Fascism will mount.
The following article is the best description of bipartisan congressional duplicity in this whole waterboarding / torture kerfuffle to date.
“Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002”
by Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post
Published: Sunday, December 9, 2007; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html
My continuing revulsion [313] regarding the parochial politicization of our national intelligence processes as well as our warfighting capability remains one of the heaviest detractors from any support for the not-so-loyal opposition. Senator John McCain remains one of the very few, national leadership voices for a strong, aggressive, national defense apparatus and some degree of balance between wartime sacrifice and the brouhaha associated with our poor, mistreated, enemy combatants. More than any of the candidates in any political party, John understands and appreciates that war is about killing and destruction until peace is won. The debate about torture did not creep into this humble journal until May 2004 [126]. I refused to even mention waterboarding until much later [309], when the politicization of the technique just would not go away.
Here is a link to an interesting Der Spiegel interview with U.S. Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff and German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.
"Guantánamo is a Symbol of a Problem"
Der Spiegel
Published: December 11, 2007
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,522438,00.html
A clear and definite portrayal of the differences between the United States and Europe regarding an essential element of the War on Islamic Fascism.
The various on-going societal debates on such topics as marriage, pornography, torture, church & state, abortion, legalized psychotropic substances, prostitution, ad infinitum, boil down to a segment of our population (varies in size depending on the issue) who seek to dictate how everyone else should live their lives, how they should seek their Happiness, and to one degree or another, how they should think and act, even in private. Marriage, as an example, has very little public dimension beyond the proper interests of the State, e.g., a free, voluntary, association devoid of coercion between adult citizens (at the age of consent or older, or with the written sanction of the parents). Rights and privileges have been defined by society for those who enter into such relationships. The State can hardly claim its interest in marriage stems from concern for the proper rearing of children and the family unit, other than in the façade of name-only. We condone the dissolution of marriage relationships for whatever reason one of the participants wishes. We intervene begrudgingly, and often too late, in marriages with physical abuse {see Castle Rock v. Gonzales [545 U.S. 748 (2005)]}, and virtually never in cases of mental or emotional abuse. Also, we very rarely intrude on dysfunctional or destructive parents who produce serial killers, school yard bullies, animal abusers, and other societal miscreants and criminals. And yet, we feel compelled to dictate who can enter into a life relationship based solely on our perception of what those involved individuals do in private, behind the front door. How can we as a culture continue to use the law to impose our private conduct dicta on highly selective, discriminatory aspects of what we call marriage, and yet virtually ignore far more threatening factors? The societal hypocrisy is sickening. Some among us are hyper-sensitive about and more interested in protecting a single-cell zygote in the womb of a rape or incest victim than they are in protecting a young infant enduring the neglect of complacent parents. Some day . . . perhaps only in the idle dreams of idealistic philosophers or optimistic science fiction writers . . . we will decide to allow people to live their lives the way they choose, to help those who truly need and want to be helped, and to hold accountable those who do not properly perform as parents. Short of that day, I can only say we must find the courage to stay out of the private lives and affairs of other free citizens even when our perception of those private affairs offends us in some manner. Two, homosexual parents who provide a loving, caring environment for children to grow up as responsible citizens are far more valuable to society than two heterosexual parents who teach their children hatred, intolerance and violence. We can do better with our choices, if we can only step back and take a long view at the big picture.
Here is a thought. The presidential primary process has exploded out of control. Until this cycle, I had little complaint about Iowa and New Hampshire occupying the opening positions in a primary period that lasted a few months. Now that we’ve made presidential election politics a continuous torture and states are jockeying for influence in party politics, the presidential candidates focus almost exclusively on those early primary states. Frankly, I am tired of listening to Iowa and New Hampshire. The latest Republican debate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was the coup d’grâce administered with ruthless savagery. So, that said, why don’t we just have a national primary four months prior to the general election? The parochial party hacks can pick their candidate; we can minimize the pain and agony of this damnable, incessant campaign process; and, we can make our choice from whatever dregs are left. My eyeballs and ears are bleeding, and my brain is fried. Enough already! And, we have 11 months to go. Have mercy!
Comments and contributions from Update no.313:
"Some folks around the world do remember and honor significant times.
"Congratulations to Taylor. Well done.
"Iran is not a done deal yet. Neither is Chavez.
"I'm not sure I really understand Putin. Good man or bad man?
"For some reason I've never heard of Fred Phelps. But I do like the statement about him needing love the most and deserving it the least.
"I agree our Humint capability, and overall intelligence capability keeps deteriorating due to more and more asinine restrictions placed on our intel community/s. It's wrong. It's dangerous, and if we don't turn it around we will be very sorry some day.
"I did not read Romney's speech quite the same as you. I heard him say he was proud of his religion, would not forsake it, but that he would never consider it in making any Presidential decisions."
My reply:
I think the jury is still out on Putin. I don’t like some of the signs I see, but I think he is trying to do what he thinks is best for Russia. The next year or two will probably answer the question.
Fred Phelps is the firebrand pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and the iron-fisted patriarch of a large family. I’m sure you have heard of the demonstrators protesting at military funerals . . . those aberrant souls are Fred Phelps and his progeny. They are insanely homophobic, beyond the threshold of hatred. The only tolerance they display is for their dogma. The really sad part of that documentary program was the indoctrination of small children, 5-10 year olds, who now mindlessly spew their rabid hatred. The Phelps clan is one of many reasons I go crazy about holding parents accountable for the actions of their children.
The really sad part of this whole torture kerfuffle along with the habeas corpus cases is the ludicrous notion that war is like law enforcement and that battlefield combatants are simple criminals. When we try to civilize the intelligence collection process and expect field agents to collect information with the same or similar restrictions and rules of evidence regulating law enforcement, we will ring the death knell. Warfighting is not criminal prosecution; it is killing and destruction, which is why it should always be the choice of last resort. The Church Committee nearly eliminated the U.S. human intelligence capability, by trying to put lipstick on the pig. I am mortally fearful we are on the verge of the second generation Church Committee, intent upon adding a dress and perfume to the pig. And, I must be candid, some of the feelings of despair and hopelessness I felt in the aftermath of Vietnam, Watergate and the Church Committee are returning to my consciousness.
My apologies; I did not mean to cause confusion. I heard Mitt quite clearly, and your observations are spot on; that is what he said. I chose to add my opinions of his words. There is a very real, palpable, potential in the Founders’ construction of the 1st Amendment's Establishment Clause and Jefferson’s illumination of the necessary “wall of separation between church and state.” The nation does not ask for anyone to diminish their faith in whatever religion is meaningful to them. I freely admit my fear of the admixture of religion and secular politics, just as I would have feared the Inquisition if I had been Galileo Galilei in 1632 – being judged by shallow, myopic, flawed men in fancy robes claiming to speak for God. As I said, there is a very REAL reason the Establishment Clause exists. John Kennedy separated himself from his church clergy and acted the part; I did not hear Mitt Romney make such a clear statement. Then again, I have not heard any of the other candidates being coerced as Romney was to making a similar statement – so the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Baptists, and all the other Christians get a pass? I guess as long as we like someone’s religion or can find some affinity with their religion, then we are OK. My God, what does that say about us?
Another contribution:
"The most serious concern I have about the CIA flap is that it was leaked by anyone. Covert operations must stay covert. To judge them in the court of public opinion is a losing position for any of us to take, particularly when the offense is to waterboard a crazy bastard who wants to kill us all." My response:
I received a similar comment from another Marine . . . I’ll cheat & add my comment back to him.
[not included; see above.]
A different contribution:
"Thanks Cap. Can you explain when you have the time, the houses voting scoring system i.e. 409-2-2-20? it sounds a little more complex than the 'ayes and nays' ('The ayes have it', to quote the speaker)."
My reply:
The reporting of votes from the House of Representatives is rather peculiar and unique to the House. There are 435 seats in the House, each with one vote. In the example you noted, a vote of 409-2-2-20 means 409 votes aye, 2 voted nay, 2 were identified as “Present” but did not vote, and 20 were not present to vote; that’ leaves 2 missing in action, most likely the seats are open due to death or resignation, or in an otherwise suspended status. Some votes are a simple majority, and some votes have a 2/3 approval requirement, thus needing 292 aye votes . . . usually to override a presidential veto. Another piece of trivia for your kit bag.
. . . a follow-up:
"Thanks Cap. It doesn't run along party lines then with 1/2/3 line whips as in our parliament."
. . . my follow-up reply:
Some votes are along party lines, but rarely . . . precisely by party affiliation; there always seems to be a few outlyers even on contentious issues. Also, votes like those I illuminated in last week’s Update make me nervous especially when the proposed law imposes restrictions on all citizens in an effort to catch the few aberrant characters who do not recognize right from wrong. But, in the main, politicians are politicians.
Another contribution:
"As I sat down tonight to do some catch-up reading, I had your weekly forum and the following show up yesterday. As I alluded in one of my past responses, potentially the greatest enemy we face daily in our free world lies within our own borders...democracy itself. I've not had much opportunity to research the following message, but I tend to lean towards its authenticity.
"I continue to be amazed at how short our memory is. At what point did we, as free thinking citizens, relinquish our right to become educated by historical, fact-based information in lieu of the hyped hysteria 'got to say it first' processes of information gathering and distribution.
"I must also add one more note to exemplify the preceding. I was on company travel last week when the Omaha massacre occurred. I did my best in trying to get complete and accurate information on the incident. The next morning I picked up the 'USA Today' paper at breakfast only to read that the information they had been given and printed came from an anonymous source that had no authority to comment. Why aren't people as exasperated as I? Three people should be in jail; the editor who allowed the info to be printed, the writer that took the story, and the anonymous source. There are right ways and wrong ways to do things, including the dissemination of critical information. Makes me wonder if anyone is keeping track of the various media outlets whose headlines or lead stories are based on anonymous sources! Anonymous vs. Validated...what is the count? From your letters, let's include the Middle East."
My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)
Last week, I illuminated William Wilberforce [313]. I did not know until we watched the movie "Amazing Grace" this weekend that the story was of Wilberforce's extraordinary effort to gain the ultimate passage of the Slave Trade Act (25.March.1807) to end British participation in the grim process. The emancipation of slaves in the British Empire did not come until 1.August.1834, after the passage of the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery on the 26th of July. The movie accentuated the relationships with and contributions of Prime Minister William Pitt and Evangelical John Newton, who wrote the lyrics to the classic Christian hymn "Amazing Grace." For those who know the hymn, the final scene of the movie is guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes -- magnificent! Despite valiant efforts and a devastating Civil War, the emancipation of slaves in United States did not come until 1.January.1863, and some would argue true emancipation was not really achieved until 2.July.1964. I highly recommend the movie "Amazing Grace" -- please watch this movie.
The follow-up news items:
-- Voldya Putin, fresh from his Duma electoral success, announced publicly his recommendation for a successor – Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev. Then, no sooner had Putin’s words vanished on the wind, Dmitry proposed that his good buddy Voldya continue his service to Russia as prime minister – ah, the intrigues of Russian politics.
-- You don’t to get to see this from Congress very often . . . on Wednesday, the Senate passed the Fair Treatment for Experienced Pilots Act [PL 110-135; H.R. 4343] by Unanimous Consent (meaning, they did not actually vote, just all agreed to pass it as written), after the House passed the bill the previous day by a vote of 390-0-0-41. The President signed the bill into law the next day; talk about fast service! The new law increases the mandatory retirement age of air carrier (Part 121) pilots from 60 to 65 years. Professional pilots sought this change for many years. Retroactive application is excluded. I am glad Congress finally got around to doing something, but they did not go far enough. To be blunt, this is discrimination based on age and should be eliminated entirely. A pilot’s ability to perform in the cockpit of a multi-crew aircraft should be based on performance criteria including Class I medical and simulator checks.
I identified Nada Nadim Prouty [310] as a name to watch. I did not know but I certainly suspected that Prouty was involved in something bigger. The web I suspected Prouty of being involved in has begun to be partially illuminated. It seems Prouty, whose family name is el-Aouar, has a sister and a former roommate now caught up in the dragnet. Prouty’s former roommate, U.S. Marine Captain Samar Spinelli, AKA Samar Khalil Nabbouh, plead guilty in Detroit to charges of citizenship and passport fraud. These two plus Prouty’s sister, Elfat el Aouar, are believed to have links to a Hezbollah intelligence network operating in the United States. Oh what a tangled web we weave . . . . If you would like to learn about all this, I urge you to read:
“Hezbollah: Signs of a Sophisticated Intelligence Apparatus”
by Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
Published: December 12, 2007; 19:38 GMT
http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/tir.php?utm_source=071212-TIR&utm_medium=email-strat-html&utm_content=071212-TIR-header-read&utm_campaign=TIR
Burton and Stewart said, “In the past, it was thought that only nation states such as Russia or Israel had the potential to send agents into another country to infiltrate their most sensitive government agencies. In this case, it could turn out that a militant group (perhaps with a little help from its Iranian mentors) was able to accomplish this feat. In this case, the agents might not only have penetrated those agencies, but maneuvered themselves into positions and locations of critical importance to Hezbollah and the Iranians. It would be quite a coup for Hezbollah to pull off such a feat while the United States and Iran were in the midst of a covert intelligence war.” While the authors hint at an espionage exposure comparable to Robert Hanssen, I have a very hard time making that connection. You will recall that FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen was a senior Bureau counter-intelligence specialist who betrayed countless American, Russian and other agents. Regardless, the Prouty network will continue to unravel, and the signs of the global nature of the War on Islamic Fascism will mount.
The following article is the best description of bipartisan congressional duplicity in this whole waterboarding / torture kerfuffle to date.
“Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002”
by Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post
Published: Sunday, December 9, 2007; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html
My continuing revulsion [313] regarding the parochial politicization of our national intelligence processes as well as our warfighting capability remains one of the heaviest detractors from any support for the not-so-loyal opposition. Senator John McCain remains one of the very few, national leadership voices for a strong, aggressive, national defense apparatus and some degree of balance between wartime sacrifice and the brouhaha associated with our poor, mistreated, enemy combatants. More than any of the candidates in any political party, John understands and appreciates that war is about killing and destruction until peace is won. The debate about torture did not creep into this humble journal until May 2004 [126]. I refused to even mention waterboarding until much later [309], when the politicization of the technique just would not go away.
Here is a link to an interesting Der Spiegel interview with U.S. Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff and German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.
"Guantánamo is a Symbol of a Problem"
Der Spiegel
Published: December 11, 2007
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,522438,00.html
A clear and definite portrayal of the differences between the United States and Europe regarding an essential element of the War on Islamic Fascism.
The various on-going societal debates on such topics as marriage, pornography, torture, church & state, abortion, legalized psychotropic substances, prostitution, ad infinitum, boil down to a segment of our population (varies in size depending on the issue) who seek to dictate how everyone else should live their lives, how they should seek their Happiness, and to one degree or another, how they should think and act, even in private. Marriage, as an example, has very little public dimension beyond the proper interests of the State, e.g., a free, voluntary, association devoid of coercion between adult citizens (at the age of consent or older, or with the written sanction of the parents). Rights and privileges have been defined by society for those who enter into such relationships. The State can hardly claim its interest in marriage stems from concern for the proper rearing of children and the family unit, other than in the façade of name-only. We condone the dissolution of marriage relationships for whatever reason one of the participants wishes. We intervene begrudgingly, and often too late, in marriages with physical abuse {see Castle Rock v. Gonzales [545 U.S. 748 (2005)]}, and virtually never in cases of mental or emotional abuse. Also, we very rarely intrude on dysfunctional or destructive parents who produce serial killers, school yard bullies, animal abusers, and other societal miscreants and criminals. And yet, we feel compelled to dictate who can enter into a life relationship based solely on our perception of what those involved individuals do in private, behind the front door. How can we as a culture continue to use the law to impose our private conduct dicta on highly selective, discriminatory aspects of what we call marriage, and yet virtually ignore far more threatening factors? The societal hypocrisy is sickening. Some among us are hyper-sensitive about and more interested in protecting a single-cell zygote in the womb of a rape or incest victim than they are in protecting a young infant enduring the neglect of complacent parents. Some day . . . perhaps only in the idle dreams of idealistic philosophers or optimistic science fiction writers . . . we will decide to allow people to live their lives the way they choose, to help those who truly need and want to be helped, and to hold accountable those who do not properly perform as parents. Short of that day, I can only say we must find the courage to stay out of the private lives and affairs of other free citizens even when our perception of those private affairs offends us in some manner. Two, homosexual parents who provide a loving, caring environment for children to grow up as responsible citizens are far more valuable to society than two heterosexual parents who teach their children hatred, intolerance and violence. We can do better with our choices, if we can only step back and take a long view at the big picture.
Here is a thought. The presidential primary process has exploded out of control. Until this cycle, I had little complaint about Iowa and New Hampshire occupying the opening positions in a primary period that lasted a few months. Now that we’ve made presidential election politics a continuous torture and states are jockeying for influence in party politics, the presidential candidates focus almost exclusively on those early primary states. Frankly, I am tired of listening to Iowa and New Hampshire. The latest Republican debate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was the coup d’grâce administered with ruthless savagery. So, that said, why don’t we just have a national primary four months prior to the general election? The parochial party hacks can pick their candidate; we can minimize the pain and agony of this damnable, incessant campaign process; and, we can make our choice from whatever dregs are left. My eyeballs and ears are bleeding, and my brain is fried. Enough already! And, we have 11 months to go. Have mercy!
Comments and contributions from Update no.313:
"Some folks around the world do remember and honor significant times.
"Congratulations to Taylor. Well done.
"Iran is not a done deal yet. Neither is Chavez.
"I'm not sure I really understand Putin. Good man or bad man?
"For some reason I've never heard of Fred Phelps. But I do like the statement about him needing love the most and deserving it the least.
"I agree our Humint capability, and overall intelligence capability keeps deteriorating due to more and more asinine restrictions placed on our intel community/s. It's wrong. It's dangerous, and if we don't turn it around we will be very sorry some day.
"I did not read Romney's speech quite the same as you. I heard him say he was proud of his religion, would not forsake it, but that he would never consider it in making any Presidential decisions."
My reply:
I think the jury is still out on Putin. I don’t like some of the signs I see, but I think he is trying to do what he thinks is best for Russia. The next year or two will probably answer the question.
Fred Phelps is the firebrand pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and the iron-fisted patriarch of a large family. I’m sure you have heard of the demonstrators protesting at military funerals . . . those aberrant souls are Fred Phelps and his progeny. They are insanely homophobic, beyond the threshold of hatred. The only tolerance they display is for their dogma. The really sad part of that documentary program was the indoctrination of small children, 5-10 year olds, who now mindlessly spew their rabid hatred. The Phelps clan is one of many reasons I go crazy about holding parents accountable for the actions of their children.
The really sad part of this whole torture kerfuffle along with the habeas corpus cases is the ludicrous notion that war is like law enforcement and that battlefield combatants are simple criminals. When we try to civilize the intelligence collection process and expect field agents to collect information with the same or similar restrictions and rules of evidence regulating law enforcement, we will ring the death knell. Warfighting is not criminal prosecution; it is killing and destruction, which is why it should always be the choice of last resort. The Church Committee nearly eliminated the U.S. human intelligence capability, by trying to put lipstick on the pig. I am mortally fearful we are on the verge of the second generation Church Committee, intent upon adding a dress and perfume to the pig. And, I must be candid, some of the feelings of despair and hopelessness I felt in the aftermath of Vietnam, Watergate and the Church Committee are returning to my consciousness.
My apologies; I did not mean to cause confusion. I heard Mitt quite clearly, and your observations are spot on; that is what he said. I chose to add my opinions of his words. There is a very real, palpable, potential in the Founders’ construction of the 1st Amendment's Establishment Clause and Jefferson’s illumination of the necessary “wall of separation between church and state.” The nation does not ask for anyone to diminish their faith in whatever religion is meaningful to them. I freely admit my fear of the admixture of religion and secular politics, just as I would have feared the Inquisition if I had been Galileo Galilei in 1632 – being judged by shallow, myopic, flawed men in fancy robes claiming to speak for God. As I said, there is a very REAL reason the Establishment Clause exists. John Kennedy separated himself from his church clergy and acted the part; I did not hear Mitt Romney make such a clear statement. Then again, I have not heard any of the other candidates being coerced as Romney was to making a similar statement – so the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Baptists, and all the other Christians get a pass? I guess as long as we like someone’s religion or can find some affinity with their religion, then we are OK. My God, what does that say about us?
Another contribution:
"The most serious concern I have about the CIA flap is that it was leaked by anyone. Covert operations must stay covert. To judge them in the court of public opinion is a losing position for any of us to take, particularly when the offense is to waterboard a crazy bastard who wants to kill us all." My response:
I received a similar comment from another Marine . . . I’ll cheat & add my comment back to him.
[not included; see above.]
A different contribution:
"Thanks Cap. Can you explain when you have the time, the houses voting scoring system i.e. 409-2-2-20? it sounds a little more complex than the 'ayes and nays' ('The ayes have it', to quote the speaker)."
My reply:
The reporting of votes from the House of Representatives is rather peculiar and unique to the House. There are 435 seats in the House, each with one vote. In the example you noted, a vote of 409-2-2-20 means 409 votes aye, 2 voted nay, 2 were identified as “Present” but did not vote, and 20 were not present to vote; that’ leaves 2 missing in action, most likely the seats are open due to death or resignation, or in an otherwise suspended status. Some votes are a simple majority, and some votes have a 2/3 approval requirement, thus needing 292 aye votes . . . usually to override a presidential veto. Another piece of trivia for your kit bag.
. . . a follow-up:
"Thanks Cap. It doesn't run along party lines then with 1/2/3 line whips as in our parliament."
. . . my follow-up reply:
Some votes are along party lines, but rarely . . . precisely by party affiliation; there always seems to be a few outlyers even on contentious issues. Also, votes like those I illuminated in last week’s Update make me nervous especially when the proposed law imposes restrictions on all citizens in an effort to catch the few aberrant characters who do not recognize right from wrong. But, in the main, politicians are politicians.
Another contribution:
"As I sat down tonight to do some catch-up reading, I had your weekly forum and the following show up yesterday. As I alluded in one of my past responses, potentially the greatest enemy we face daily in our free world lies within our own borders...democracy itself. I've not had much opportunity to research the following message, but I tend to lean towards its authenticity.
"I continue to be amazed at how short our memory is. At what point did we, as free thinking citizens, relinquish our right to become educated by historical, fact-based information in lieu of the hyped hysteria 'got to say it first' processes of information gathering and distribution.
"I must also add one more note to exemplify the preceding. I was on company travel last week when the Omaha massacre occurred. I did my best in trying to get complete and accurate information on the incident. The next morning I picked up the 'USA Today' paper at breakfast only to read that the information they had been given and printed came from an anonymous source that had no authority to comment. Why aren't people as exasperated as I? Three people should be in jail; the editor who allowed the info to be printed, the writer that took the story, and the anonymous source. There are right ways and wrong ways to do things, including the dissemination of critical information. Makes me wonder if anyone is keeping track of the various media outlets whose headlines or lead stories are based on anonymous sources! Anonymous vs. Validated...what is the count? From your letters, let's include the Middle East."
My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)
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