The Meanderings of Politics

This week was an interesting week in the political world. The first interesting event was Harriet Miers withdrawing her name from consideration for the Supreme Court. On the one hand I was happy that she withdrew her name from consideration. On the other hand, I wasn't happy with how the politics of innuendo and whispering more or less forced her out. I am hoping that President Bush nominates a well qualified conservative candidate who is a strict constructionist.

I was a little suprised that Lewis Libby was actually indicted by the grand jury. Assuming that the charges are true, it will be hard to win a conviction on perjury and obstruction charges. I'm happy that Fitzgerald didn't hold back just because Libby is a politically powerful individual, which happens all too often in the Washington scene. I would have liked to have seen the individual who leaked Valerie Plame's name indicted, but that was probably difficult given that everyone was pointing fingers at each other. But, I have a feeling that Fitzgerald might have more up his sleeve, and the Libby indictment is just the opening gambit.

Pat Strikes Again

Our favorite "misrepresentative" of Christianity, Pat Robertson, struck again on Thursday. He was upset about the level of criticism that Harriet Miers, Bush's Supreme Court nominee, has received. He said, "Now they're going to turn against a Christian who is a conservative picked by a conservative president and they're going to vote against her for confirmation? Not on your sweet life, if they want to stay in office." Apparently, he thinks that being Christian and conservative are the only necessary qualifications for a Supreme Court justice. Somehow the concept of whether Harriet Meiers has any judicial experience is irrelevant to Mr. Robertson. With the exception of some liberal Democrats, I don't think most senators are opposed to Ms. Miers's appointment based on the fact that she's a Christian. And conservative Republicans aren't opposed to her because she is conservative. Most of the opposition is due to her never having sat on a bench in her life.

Lousy Day

Today started on a bad note, and it didn't get much better. During a meeting at work, we were having a discussion about the proper way to technically implement a project. One of the team members took my technical arguments very personally, and responded by personally attacking me. Of course, since I have to work with this person, I pretty much just tuned out of the rest of the meeting, so that I didn't respond with personal attacks myself. You can just imagine what I wanted to tell this individual, but didn't.

Still, the experience got me thinking. Suppose a manufacturing company told its employees that a new computer-controlled laser drill could help them drill faster and more accurately. Would the employees appreciate the facts that they could build better products, spend less time on each one, and suffer less negative impacts such as carpal tunnel syndrome? Or would they perceive the new tool as management saying that their current craftsmanship and productivity were poor? I'm guessing that the second situation happens more often than we think, and it's a wonder that this country manages to innovate at all.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." I think he should have said, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will come to your door and beat you."

Driving While Sober

The organization Mothers Against Civil Liberties, otherwise known as the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, must love Washington DC. An article in this morning's Washington Post shows that you can get a ticket for drunk driving even with a blood alcohol level of 0.01. That is not a typo - 0.01, as opposed to the legal limit in some states of 0.10. At that low of a limit, it is even possible for the Listerine with which you just rinsed your mouth to register.

I'm a strong advocate of keeping drunk drivers off the road, but I personally view this as being completely ridiculous. Some people just won't be happy until we have restored Prohibition.

Some Random Thoughts on New Priesthood Rules

The Washington Post reports that the Catholic Church is finishing new guidelines on who may enter the priesthood. Unlike earlier drafts of the rules, which banned gays from serving in the priesthood, the new draft permits gays to serve in the priesthood provided that they can prove that they have been celibate for three years. The new draft has been controversial, with many conservative Catholics upset that the rules allow gays to serve as priests. Many people believe that the child abuse scandals that rocked the church in the late 90's were directly the result of gays in the priesthood. Their reasoning is that because only boys were abused by the rogue priests, either all gays must be pedophiles, or gays are more likely to be pedophiles.

Unfortunately, this reasoning has some flaws. First, it does not take into account the children who were accessible to the priests. The majority of altar children are boys, and of those, the ones most likely to spend significant time with priests would be those who themselves had an interest in the priesthood. Thus, the vast majority of the potential targets for the pedophile priests were boys. Second, there are no good statistics on what percentage of priests have gay tendancies versus those who do not. Thus, based on the available information, it is impossible to determine the likelihood of an individual being a pedophile priest based on whether they are gay or straight.

What is the essence of celibacy? Is being straight having straight tendancies, or acting on them? Likewise, is being gay having homosexual thoughts, or acting on them? A person who is celibate should not be acting on any sexual tendancies, gay or straight. Instead, the celibacy of the priesthood is about the daily action of setting aside one's sexuality in the service of God's work.

I wonder why the new rules mandate that gay individuals have to prove that they have been celibate for three years, while not mandating the same requirement for straight individuals. Celibacy is not an easy thing for people to do, regardless of sexual orientation. A straight individual who has failed in remaining celibate is not necessarily a good candidate for the priesthood. True character is not based on a person's tempatations, but on the actions that they take.

I think the most significant issue for those in the priesthood with gay tendancies (and for those who do not) is whether they will be strong advocates for the teachings of the church. Will they condem homosexual behavior? Will they promote abstinence outside of marriage? Will they remain true to their vow of celibacy? Can they use their own daily struggles with temptation as a tool to teach others how to fight lustful desires and sinful behavior? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then obviously that person is not a good candidate for the priesthood.

Perhaps I Should Get an Important Position Too

President Bush announced yesterday that he was nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Ms. Miers is a noted attorney whose history includes being the first woman president of the Texas State Bar, and she became President's Bush's deputy chief of staff in 2003. There appears to be no doubt that people perceive her to be a competent lawyer.

There's just one minor problem with the nomination of Ms. Miers. She has never served as a judge, not even at the state or local levels. She has no track record of showing that she can be an impartial jurist. We have no idea how she would behave in a courtroom. Since she has never been a judge, there is no case history showing whether she would have strictly followed the law, or whether her rulings would have been consistently overturned on appeal. And since appointments to the Supreme Court are for life, this lack of history is problematic. Granted, she could turn out to be like William Rehnquist, who turned out to be an accomplished judge despite not having been a federal judge beforehand. The President trusts Ms. Meiers, and wants all of us to trust her too based on nothing more than his recommendation. But given the importance of this nomination, I would like something more than the President's gut feeling for the Senate when it provides its advice and consent.

But who am I to complain? Since the President is appointing people without any history of experience, I would like to suggest that he nominate me as the next Secretary of Defense. I'm sure that my career up to this point has made me an excellent candidate. Oh, nevermind -- I forgot the most significant qualification. I haven't been the President's trusted buddy for the past decade.

How to Waste One Hundred and Twenty-Four Minutes of Your Life

Tonight, I friend of mine and I rented the movie Sin City, which turned out to be a very bad movie. Actually, bad doesn't even begin to describe the lack of quality in this movie. The movie was filmed to be the movie equivalent of a comic book, with color imposed on black and white scenes, and characters narrating their thoughts in a typical cheesy comic book style. I figured that the plot would follow a typical comic script pattern, and that the bizarre nature of the plot would eventually resolve itself. Alas, the plot succeeded in keeping us from turning the movie off because we thought, "it can't really be this bad". The movie plot makes me think that it could only have been produced by the collaboration of a fourteen-year-old boy and a forty-year-old repressed man. The fourteen-year-old contributed the guns and gratuitous violence, and the forty-year-old contributed women in outfits best suited to the West Village, along with a weird sideline where Lolita grows up. (Shudder.)

Anyways, this movie joins Revenge (starring Kevin Costner) on my list of really lousy movies. There are lots of bad movies out there, but sometimes there are movies like these that make you wonder how anyone could possibly think that producing them is a good idea. I think they're so bad that even Mystery Science Theater 3000 (anyone remember that show?) wouldn't touch these movies even to make fun of them.