Faith-based organizations
Well, it looks like some faith-based organizations are being extremely active in continued earthquake relief in Pakistan. Miltant Islamists, in particular. (Has our government really thought this whole faith-based routine through? cf. on Tuesday, the President ordered DHS to create a faith-based division. No word yet on which faiths will be invited to participate.)
(And the article cited suggests that “there is hope that [these] groups… are trading the mantle of militancy for social work.” I’m not really sure why they think that radical groups engaging in social work means they’re going to stop killing people; Hamas has been running schools and hospitals for years, in parallel with suicide bombing campaigns, and they’re far from the only ones)
Okay…
Yes, it looks like Rumsfeld has finally lost his last bit of touch with reality. “U.S. to rely on Iraqi forces to quell civil war” is the headline. Now, the Iraqi forces are in no small part involved in the civil war, but don’t let that intervene.
Seriously, I can see how a civil war in Iraq could even be to the United States’ advantage, but I would really like to know that we’re doing our foreign policy on purpose rather than by accident, and that we have something resembling a sane operational plan for how to protect our own people there when the shit hits the industrial-sized fan.
News snippets
Two bits from the Washington Post: An editorial by George Will about a president acting like a monarch – noteable since it comes from one of the leading conservative writers in the country. And a good history of the cartoon protests going on across the Muslim world.
On a lighter note, here’s a London Tube Map with the names replaced by anagrams, and a standard Tube map for comparison. My favorite is the “Aleph & Tentacles.”
Dubious arguments
Alberto Gonzalez defended the President’s domestic espionage program today.
The biggest thing I see wrong with his statements is that they could apply equally well to anything: if those arguments are acceptable in this case, why do they not also allow the President to order summary execution of anyone suspected of involvement with an enemy? Does this theory acknowledge any limits at all to executive power?
FISA judges to be briefed
The FISA court is arranging a formal briefing where the administration will (in theory) explain its warrantless spying program.
- Will there be any analogue of opposing counsel there? Will someone be asking hard questions of the administration, or will it simply be the administration people giving a presentation to the judges and then the judges having to decide to quit or not? Why is this not a matter for a hearing of the ordinary sort?
- Note that this WP article quietly confirms Ars Technica’s analysis of what the illegal spying program actually entailed…
One more news story
In the Padilla case, Judge J. Michael Luttig of the 4th circuit court of appeals blasted the administration’s handling of the case and rejected their move to do a jurisdictional shuffle to keep this case from ever reaching the Supreme Court.
For those of you who haven’t been following: Padilla was arrested on a charge of a “dirty bomb” plot about 3.5 years ago and was held incommunicado in a military prison until heavy outside pressure forced them to allow him counsel (about a year and a half later). The case now pending before the court is whether the administration has the right to hold a US citizen as an enemy combatant outside of the legal system. The case is approaching the Supreme Court, so a few weeks ago the government tried a jurisdiction move: they formally charged Padilla with some unrelated matters and ordered him moved to a civilian prison, in an attempt to moot the issue, and asked the court of appeals to withdraw an earlier decision it made in their favor so that the Supreme Court wouldn’t have a chance to review it. Luttig is a very prominent (and very conservative) jurist, so the forcefulness of his statement today is a big deal.
News entries
If you haven’t been reading the news in the past few days, here are some important things:
(1) More details on the violence in China
(2) More on domestic spying by the NSA: FISA judge resigns in protest; interesting analysis from Slate; even more interesting analysis from Ars Technica.
(3) The latest version of the Scopes Monkey Trial ended. Analysis article; the judge’s decision is very worth reading if you have the time and want a very clear and systematic explanation of the problems with creationism.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, and supposedly an Evangelical Christian, responded to calls for “Creation Care” (i.e., stewardship of the world) from the National Association of Evangelicals, in an interesting fashion: (Source article)
Mr. Inhofe said the vast majority of the nation’s evangelical groups would oppose global warming legislation as inconsistent with a conservative agenda that also includes opposition to abortion rights and gay rights. He said the National Evangelical Association had been “led down a liberal path” by environmentalists and others who have convinced the group that issues like poverty and the environment are worth their efforts.
This is a fascinating little statement: it’s probably the most concise summary I’ve ever seen of how certain individuals have decided to preach doctrines completely at odds with everything Jesus ever preached, up to and including some pretty vile doctrines, (poverty is not worth Christians’ efforts?!) under the rather thin excuse of “real conservatives don’t believe in this!”
Just a reminder to my Christian friends that just because someone calls himself an Evangelical and a conservative doesn’t mean he actually believes in something you’d want to associate yourself with…
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 
