A Black / White Issue (Pun intended)

So, says the Associated Press, the U.S. Senate is about to consider an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that marriage can only be between a male and a female. The AP article went on to say it “had little chance” of passing (we’ll see).

My question is this: If this proposed amendment to the Constitution instead said that marriage was only permitted between people of the same race, wouldn’t we recognize it for what it is, a blatant attempt to legalize prejudice against someone you don’t like or agree with?

But, of course, the hypocritical so-called Christians will hide behind their twisted interpretations of Bible verses to justify their unjustifiable position against gays the same way they once did to rationalize that African-Americans didn’t deserve any rights.

Here’s a prediction: This issue might very well blow up in the face of the neo-cons. Poll after poll says that while the majority of Americans would not have an abortion, they don’t believe they have the right to tell someone else they don’t have the right to an abortion. It may well turn out that the majority of Americans will say that while they believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, they don’t have the right to impose that belief on someone else (we’ll see).

More when is enough, enough?

According to several new sources, Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is planning to propose that ISPs be required to record information about Americans' online activities so that police can more easily "conduct criminal investigations." Executives at companies that fail to comply would be fined and imprisoned for up to one year, the new sources said.

Hell, Sensenbrenner, why are you pussy-footing around with the silly old Internet? If you want to make it easier for police to conduct criminal investigations --- to catch us doing something wrong! --- why not just put video cameras every home?

Would all of you good GOP loyalists fall in line to support that? “Well,” you’d piously intone, “if you’re not doing anything wrong, then why would you be worried about having a video camera in your home?”

When is enough damage to the Constitution enough?

Two thoughts on the phone records farce

First, how many terrorists do you really think there are hiding under our beds, so to speak, in the U.S.? (Which begs for the follow-up question of who do you define as a terrorist? But that’s a whole different discussion.)

Of course, the CIA or the NSA or whoever wouldn’t ever publicly give such a number because, they would argue, it might compromise national security. (It might also undermine their bloated budgets, but that also is a whole different discussion.)

So, in the absence of any hard data, let’s do some creative speculating, if for no other reason than to spark a little critical thinking here.

There are 300 million people in the United States:

- Ten percent of that would be 30 million
- One percent would be 3 million
- One-tenth of one percent would be 300,000
- And one one-thousandth of one percent would be 30,000

Do you suppose there might actually be as many as 30,000 al-Qaeda people secretly running around our streets? Frankly, that seems like a rather high number to me. Given the terrorist predilection for secrecy and low visibility, I would suspect that the actual number of al-Qaeda operatives that are on U.S. soil is probably a lot closer to 3,000 than 30,000 --- 3,000 is one ten-thousandth of one percent of the U.S. population.

Doesn’t spending billions of dollars a year to comb through the phone records of 300 million people in order to try to keep track of, at worst, one one-thousandth of one percent of that number and more likely closer to one ten thousandth of one percent, seem more than a little overkill? It certainly does to me? Which, of course, raises a whole different question: What else might they be looking for than al-Qaeda activity?

My second thought is this: I resent that the government is presuming that I am guilty of something and that they have the right to look over my shoulder at all times just waiting to catch me at whatever it is I am guilty of. Every grade school and high school civics class and even the poli sci class I had to take in college were universal in their belief that one of the defining elements of being an American is that you are innocent until proven guilty. Somehow Bush and the Republicans seem to have gotten that turned around: I’m guilty of something and need to continuously prove my innocence.

Looking over their people’s shoulders at all times is what despots and tyrants do in their paranoia that someone might be plotting against them. Which then brings me back to my closing question above: What are they really looking for?

Whose “disaster” is it?

According to the Associated Press, Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, in what sounds like an almost hysterical fund-raising letter, asks for immediate financial help ''to prevent the most left-wing Democrat Party in history from seizing control of the United States Senate'' in the November elections. She goes on to talk about the possibility that the Democrats might ''increase your taxes, call for endless investigations, congressional censure and maybe even impeachment of President Bush, put the war on terrorism on the back-burner'' and even ''Take over the White House in 2008!'' In the letter, said the AP, she assured the recipients that she was working around the clock ''to help our country avoid this disaster.''

I guess this is as opposed to the “disaster” --- an unjustified war in Iraq, a federal deficit that is out of control, gasoline prices that are at record levels, illegal spying on American citizens, rampant incompetence in federal administrators, lobbyists virtually running the U.S. Congress, huge tax breaks for the super rich and large corporations, and finally, the federal non-response to the Katrina disaster --- that the most right-wing Republican Party in history has wreaked on us for the last ten or so years.