At Random, 3/11/06

Which One Is the Surprise?:

I couldn't have said it better myself. From NYT:

We keep hearing that the Republicans in Congress are in revolt against the president.

Some rebellion.

For once the New York Times is even more cynical than I am about the Republicans. Whoda thunkit?

An "Activist Judge" Fights Back:

Pam Spaulding picks up on a story from Raw Story: Now that she's retired, Sandra Day O'Connor is free to speak her mind.

In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O’Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, as she put it “really, really angry.” But, she continued, if we don’t make them mad some of the time we probably aren’t doing our jobs as judges. . . .

Check out the post at Pam's House Blend, especially the comments by the freepers. Easy to see where slack-jawed idiocy is leading the country.

Children Last:

Another one from Pam's House Blend. I actually saw this story at 365gay.com a couple of days ago.

"In spite of much effort and analysis, Catholic Charities of Boston finds that it cannot reconcile the teaching of the Church, which guides our work, and the statutes and regulations of the Commonwealth," Hehir said in a statement.

"We plan to begin discussions with appropriate agencies of the Commonwealth to end our work in adoptions. We will do this in an orderly, planned fashion so that the children we have been entrusted with will be cared for, supported and found permanent homes," the statement said.

The state's four bishops asked the legislature to grant Catholic Charities the right to refuse to allow gays and lesbians to adopt children. The proposal was opposed by Democratic and Republican lawmakers but earlier this week was endorsed by GOP Gov. Mitt Romney.

I start to wonder how much hypocrisy American Catholics can stand from their hierarchy. It becomes more and more obvious that the Church's priority is the authority of the Church. We all remember how concerned they were about the welfare of children who were being molested by priests. (And if you're sick of hearing about that, too bad. As long as the Church continues its hateful and immoral teachings about gays, that's how long you'll continue to hear about it condoning the activities of predatory, child-molesting priests.) Archbishop O'Malley, who was widely touted as someone to pull the Diocese of Boston together after the disaster that was Cardinal Law (who, be it remembered, was kicked upstairs rather than being punished) has shown himself to be as unprincipled as the hierarchy as a whole.

Mitt Romney is such a whore I can't believe he can look himself in the mirror. From the story in the Boston Globe:

"This is a sad day for neglected and abandoned children," Romney, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said in a statement issued while he was in Tennessee to address the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. "It's a mistake for our laws to put the rights of adults over the needs of children.

"While I respect the board's decision to stay true to their principles, I find the current state of the law deeply disturbing and a threat to religious freedom," he said.

If by "adults" he means the Catholic hierarchy, he's perfectly correct. And, as we learned from earlier in the story, this wasn't the decision of Catholic Charities' board -- it was the decision of the Vatican. The board was unanimous in continuing to provide services under the terms of the law. Let's give credit where credit it due.

And note one thing: the commentary I've seen is mostly from gay bloggers, who are unanimous in their concern for the children.

Real Evil

Andrew Sullivan's e-mail of the day. I do take exception with one statement:

Here's the fundamental problem with Bush: he's not evil, he's certainly not corrupt in the Jack Abramoff sense of the word. I'm sure he lives a life of rectitude compared to many. But he's an incurious man, he's intellectually lazy, and, in the White House, that amounts to moral laziness, which, frankly, amounts to evil. Once Bush makes a decision about something, he never revisits it, because if it was right then, surely it must always be so.

I've become convinced over the past five years that Bush is evil. It's the blank-faced, corporate evil that is so pervasive in this country (and that his administration has done so much to support). It's the evil of power with no accountability, of no one being responsible, which will become, I think, the Bush legacy, as Reagan's legacy was that "greed is good." It's the evil of the bourgeoisie, which they take as a virtue. Bush has no moral foundation save his own perceived self-interest, which makes him a member in good standing of the Boomer generation (sad to say, also my generation). Bush has no ideals and no morals. That's evil.