179. LET THE DNA CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY

From the Archives

(4 January 2006) Julian day 2,453,740 and I am wondering if John and Yoko named their son after this measure.
It’s 12:02 AM and I am backing up my four-thousand-plus iTunes songs in anticipation of an upgrade to Creative Suite II tomorrow.

So lots to ponder these days. A Virginia coroner’s preserved blood samples were subjected to modern DNA tests, and they exonerated five inmates who spent a total of 90 years in prison on rape convictions. Gov. Warner has now ordered that the coroner’s other samples be tested and has vowed to “let the DNA chips fall where they may.”

Meanwhile, at a time when it’s well nigh impossible to avoid suggestions of Republican corruption, King Bush the Latter has announced his nominees for the Federal Election Commission. His choices, according to the New York Times., “would keep the policing of campaign abuses firmly in the hands of party wheel horses.”

Our would-be king waited till the Senate recessed to make his announcement in an effort to avoid confirmation hearings (which certainly makes me believe that there’s nothing, nothing at all, to worry about).

Even though one of his nominees “is reported to have been involved in the maneuvering to overrule the career specialists” at the Justice Department who “warned that the Texas gerrymandering orchestrated by Rep. Tom DeLay violated minority voting rights” and in “such voting rights abuses as the purging of voter rolls in Florida in the 2000 elections.”

It appears that big money has taken over our voting rights now too.

(An did I mention Shrub’s connections to the company that makes the popular [and untraceable] electronic voting equipment?)

I suppose I could have entitled this entry “Let the Republican Chips Fall Where They May,” since Ralph Reed (ha ha snort) and Tom DeLay (who will yet be found guilty of money-laundering and conspiracy yet) and Dennis Hastert and Sonny Bono’s widowed wife-turned-representative and Trent Lott and numerous other Republicans who accepted $4.4 million in funneled corporate funds plus lavish gifts from super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff have been squirming in their loafers ever since Abramoff agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the burgeoning corruption and bribery investigation of Washington lawmakers.
According to the Times, the soon-to-be-falling Republican chips could make Abscam and The Keating 5 look like small potatoes.

So let’s see, there’s CIA leaks and NSA wiretapping, and nd Michael Scanlon, former aid to Tom DeLay, pleading guilty to conspiring to bribe officials and now cooperating with prosecutors.

And Abramoff, who scammed $80 million from native-American tribes (my ancestors curse you, now cooperating with prosecutors.

It won’t take long, according to the Times, to follow the bouncing Abramoff ball to David H. Safavian (indicted former head of the White House procurement office), Karl Rove (whose former employer became Abramoff’s personal assistant), Tyco (whose executives funneld $2 million to Grassroots Interactive), Ralph Reed (demanded laundered tribal money from Abramofff), Tom DeLay (“Abramoff is one of my closest and dearest friends”), and Rep. Ney (R-Oh), who went to Scotland to golf on Abramoff’s dime.

And that’s just what we know right now.

Let’s say that out loud fast: law makers breaking laws. No ethics none.

This certainly explains the Democrats' strategy of fighting Republican culture of corruption in the next election, eh?

(And who knew that Ralph Reed was even a candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia? Why Georgia? And is this a step to higher office à la Pat Robertson?

Reed is, after all, the strategist who came up with the idea of placing stealth Christianist candidates in public office. And gosh, don’t those untaxed Christian Coalition purse strings keep getting looped around every corrupt Republican thing?)

Meanwhile, Free Press has moved up the release date of James Risen’s State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration to Today, since the AP already exposed Risen’s major revelation that the US is secretly eavesdropping on US citizens.

This book outlines how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. In fact,

State of War provides an account of the origins and scope of the wiretap program that basically repeats the revelations contained in Risen and Lichtblau's stories in the Times. But the book also argues that the NSA's eavesdropping policy shows the extent to which the war on terrorism has spurred the intelligence community to flout legal conventions at home and abroad. Risen's chief target is the CIA, where, he argues, institutional dysfunction and feckless leadership after 9/11 led to intelligence breakdowns that continue to haunt the U.S. Though much of State of War covers ground that is broadly familiar, the book is punctuated with a wealth of previously unreported tidbits about covert meetings, aborted CIA operations and Oval Office outbursts. (Time magazine)

I am losing faith. (Not that I had much to begin with.)

When exactly will the impeachment procedures begin?

75. QUOTE TO MAKE YOU SHIVER

From the Archives (April 2005)

We set the jurisdiction of the courts

said Tom DeLay, the House majority leader with bucketsfull of questionable ethics said.

We set up the courts. We can unset the courts.

67. MEMBERS ONLY

From the Archives

(April 2005) Today’s the anniversary of the day Oscar Wilde was arrested on sodomy charges after a Marquis accused him of having an affair with his son.

That was in the 1800s. Today, sodomy is still illegal in many states. (Fall in love (or lust); go to jail. Go directly to jail....)

In other news, if it weren’t illegal, I would steal Cecil’s clever idea and call this entry NEWS OF THE WEIRD because there’s a whole lot of weirdness going on in our country right now.

(1) A Florida sheriff who was pissed at criticism he received in the local paper’s editorial section used the driver’s license database to locate the letter-writer, then sent her a letter refuting her comments. Problem is, assh0le, she has a right to free speech and you violated federal privacy laws.

(2) Then there’s Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin who was stripped of her title (and, I assume, her tiara) after a newspaper article included a photo of her standing. Apparently, the former Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin has muscular dystrophy and spends most of her time on a scooter but, on good days, she can still sometimes walk up to 50 feet. She sometimes stands while teaching too—but I guess that's too mobile for the judges, who believe that she withheld her obviously stellar physical capabilities.

(3) And let’s not forget the news that Hunter S. Thompson’s wife is going to shoot his ashes from a cannon (which, for imagination purposes, I will just think of as a very large bong).

(4) And, now three words about a report that there have now been 35,000 news stories on the pope worldwide: SHUT UP ALREADY!

Were there a comparable number of stories about Terry Shiavo or did it just seem that way? I would love to run a per-character comparison to the articles investigating those theoretical weapons of mass destruction.

(5) No big surprise here, but the shrub’s approval ratings are the lowest ever for a second-term president. Guess he’ll have to start another war, just like Daddy did.

(Oh but wait. Bush The Former started his war because his ne’er-mentioned, ne’er-do-well son Neil’s trial began that same day. In other words, the people who died that day died because it was an opportunistic way to bury a bad story about his fambly.)

(6) The Bush family's high morals must have influenced co-Texan and current House majority leader Tom (shiver) DeLay, whose wife and daughter have apparently been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by hubbydad’s PACs.

(7) And, finally, the Masters golf tournament has begun again sans protestors.

(Meanwhile, women are still barred entrance to the club.)

64. DEATH BE NOT PROUD

From the Archives

(31 March 2005) Well the poor woman’s body has finally been allowed to die.

I’ve been looking out the window at ominous clouds wondering how many of Terri Schiavo’s angry mourners mourned Matthew Shephard’s death, how many of them supported “Rev.” Fred Phelps, who protested at the funeral and tortured Shephard’s grieving parents by screaming that their son was in Hell where he belongs and that God Hates Fags. There’s a fine example of Christian charity ... or was that faith-based moral judgment at tax-payers' expense? (It’s getting closer all the time.)

There were no good outcomes in this tragedy, but these hypocritical Christians and opportunistic politicians really disgust me.

How can DeLay, whose morals have long been in question and who removed life-support from his own parent, look at himself in the mirror? How can Frist, who no doubt advised families of patients who had suffered irreversible heart damage to let their loved ones die with dignity? Surely some reporter can find these people and expose him for the opportunistic fraud he is.

Yahoo! reports that “Dawn Kozsey, 47, a musician who was among those outside Schiavo’s hospice, wept. ‘Words cannot express the rage I feel,’ she said. ‘Is my heart broken for this? Yes.’”

Did Dawn Kozsey protest after Matthew Shephard was murdered? Express rage? Was her heart broken?

Yahoo! again: “Rev. Frank Pavone [said] ‘This is not only a death, with all the sadness that brings, but this is a killing, and for that we not only grieve [the deceased’s passing] but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this and we pray that it will never happen again.’”

Did Rev. Pavone grieve Shephard’s murder? Make a public statement against homophobia? Did he work to create safeguards to decrease the likelihood of such a thing ever happening again, preach a sermon about loving all of God’s children?

I was on a bus in New York City when I heard the news about Matthew Shephard and overheard the woman behind me saying “Those fags deserve to die. Fuck!ng in the butt like they got no sense.”

The irony of the pope being on a tube is not lost on me. Nor is the irony of a man being arrested for offering a reward for the murder of Michael Shiavo (because he supports life, no doubt).

I have been in a situation where we had to make a decision to remove or not remove life support four times. It is a horrible decision to have to make, but which decision was best seemed clear each time.

My grandmother, who climbed mountains in her 80s and who had been in excellent health for all of her life, had a massive heart attack. Tests showed that she suffered major damage. A surgeon could have performed an extremely invasive surgery that would have kept her alive (and in ICU) for a few more weeks, but she had no chance of meaningful recovery nor would she have ever left the hospital.

Who would make the decision to perform that surgery? Removing the shell of her body from life support while expressing gratitude that someone so wonderful had lived so long and died so quickly was clearly the right decision and I am so grateful that I was able to hold her hand as she died.

My father—and this is useful information for everyone to know—signed a DNR in the hospital, then was released and readmitted a few hours later. The admissions clerk told him that he did not have to sign a DNR again but, when he went into heart failure, the doctors insisted on reviving him because he had failed to sign a new DNR upon readmittance.

So, instead of being able to die naturally from the cancer that had metasticized all over his body (cancer that no one knew about until the evening before this event, when he was admitted for tests), he lived with no brain activity for another five days because one of my sisters—who was separated from her husband and days away from delivering her first child (a child who would now never know her grandfather)—refused to believe the doctor when he said that Daddy was a vegetable. She argued with him, told us we wanted to murder our own father/husband, said he was in the room recovering, come see.

It was awful, but my mother was right that the decision should be unanimous. So he lay there for days basically melting as the cancer attacked the part of his brain that regulates temperature, until my sister finally agreed that we should remove life support and let his outer shell go.

Thankfully, Mud’s father was a surgeon who understood that his wife had no chance for meaningful recovery, so Mud and her dad and I were in the room with her when she died peacefully from (seemingly) natural causes.

We made the decision to not remove life support from my teenager brother after his traumatic motorcycle wreck, despite heavy pressure from medical personnel to donate his organs to someone who had some chance of a meaningful recovery. They told us that he had less than a one percent chance of survival and that he was horribly injured, but we could see that he was also screaming when the equipment registered him as dead and watched him bite a nurse when the doctor began a cut-down on him without anesthesizing him.

We decided that he was clearly fighting for his life and taht he deserved to continue fighting, even if he did only have a 1 percent chance of living (and lo, the boy lived to drink and drive another day).

•

David Morris’s Alternet column today explores how “organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level..." Let’s call its institutions by their proper name, he says, “superstition-based institutions...: The impact of moving towards superstition-based institutions would be highly controversial, quite educational, and on the whole exceedingly salutary,” he says. “Consider the impact on the audience if we switched the interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's following statement, posted on a federal web site:

I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives. Our government should not fear programs that exist because a church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one. We should not discriminate against programs based upon superstition in America. We should enable them to access federal money, because superstition-based programs can change people's lives, and America will be better off for it.

He quotes Robert Green Ingersoll, who traveled the country explaining

why the word God does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The founding fathers "knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man."

Ingersoll believed that reason, not faith, could and should be the basis for modern morality. "Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of 'inspiration,’ he insisted. ‘It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge—that is to say, of science. When man [sic] becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men [sic], then, and not until then, will the world be civilized."

And he quotes Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who

explained how organized and assertive religions around the world have restricted women's rights. "You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman ... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindu woman burn herself upon a funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man [sic], of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it."

Stanton's enduring motto was, "Seek Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth."

Finally, he notes with alarm that

Organized superstition in this country has begun to drive and guide social policy. The clearest example of this is the recent enactment by several states of laws that allow pharmacists and doctors and hospitals to refuse to treat patients whose behavior conflicts with the their superstitions.

The central problem with organized, assertive religion, of course, is that it endows superstition with a moral and messianic fervor. God-directed superstition can be a lethal force. Indeed, one might argue that this type of force is behind much of the violence around the world.

If you want to read the entire article, it’s here