Why is James Dobson famous?

James Dobson is "making stuff up," says Barack Obama.

Not that that's news, of course, since for people like Dobson, making stuff up is a base function of the medulla oblongata. As Obama reportedly put it, "Somebody would be pretty hard-pressed to make that argument" — that he was distorting the Bible.

"Argument" is a generous courtesy on Obama's part, since Dobson didn't "argue" so much as whine noisily. I know this because the national press deems his wailings and gnashings practically lead-in material on the evening news.

Why this is is an interesting question on its own. In a more perfect world, Dobson would be wearing a sandwich board and ringing a bell on a street corner somewhere. People would pass him by, maybe give him a dollar or a cigarette or a half a bagel, but otherwise ignore his fevered gesticulations. He might even get arrested.

But Dobson apparently has "influence" over a considerable number of people including — it is rumored — the ear of the current president himself and all that entails.

Last evening CNN devoted an extended segment to Dobson's unwittingly doltish performance during which, it must be gratefully acknowledged, the laughably inept Tony Perkins was definitively flogged by Al Sharpton, Roland Martin, and Anderson Cooper in turn (even though both Perkins and Sharpton shared a round of guffaws about Cooper, who is gay, burning in Hell. Which would be funny if not for Perkins and Sharpton actually believing it).

And Perkins needed to start making more stuff up when he was shown portions of the speech featuring Obama criticizing hardliner secularists and acknowledging not only the existence of Judeo-Christian moral principles in the American system of law, but also the fact that many are appropriately enforceable. Perkins then tried to make it about Obama's personal faith, which it wasn't at all.

Dobson, who is incompetent even as a conservative radio host, a position created for incompetents, commits the same clear error.

It's obvious why Dobson dug up Obama's 2006 speech to a Christian group. Because he doesn't want his own little farce exposed. And because of Obama's emerging strategy to woo some of the Christian "values voters" over and from whom Dobson demands exclusive preserve, allegiance and, ultimately, control.

Dobson hasn't a clue what Obama was talking about and when Dobson weeps about being prevented from pushing "partial birth abortion" legislation he's flatly lying. He can push it wherever he likes.

Obama's speech was informed by political theory, not aversion to "orthodox Christian" dogma, as Tony Perkins calls his own personal, subjective version of objective morality.

What Obama is saying is that there are a number of approaches a rational political society may take in order to arrange a widely applicable system of ethics. Because it's impossible for everyone to agree on everything, Obama is initiating a dialogue to determine whether there are some things that almost everyone agrees are destructive to the polity's ethic, theft of property or child sexual assault for example.

When more subtle ethical questions arise, religion presents itself into the calculus and because religion wouldn't be religion without dogma, Dobson's dogma ultimately faces off against one of the other televangelists' dogmas.

The Bible that James Dobson is whacking is a very complicated assembly of disparate and highly derivative texts whose influence in many, many ways shaped Western civilization itself, not to mention civilizations elsewhere, still in existence or otherwise.

It accreted over centuries and various bits and pieces of it have been adhered to — or not — by hundreds of separate and distinct societies over a few thousand years.

Obama is not saying that only his interpretation of the Bible is inherently correct; it's Dobson and his ilk that are making that baseless insistence. Obama is simply pointing out that sectarian dogmatism in the false guise of absolute morality is a stumbling block to constructing the political ethic, by definition.

Dobson needs to understand that he's not going to convert all the people of America to his particular flavor of so-called Christianity. And obviously he can continue to insist on his own special divine insight.

The point is, if you are going to use the Bible as a source of ethical guidance, that's perfectly appropriate. Even I would use it. Selectively, of course, as I'm not about to give up calamari or cotton/rayon blends.

And it's also perfectly appropriate to attempt to codify that Biblical guidance in legislation and turn its enforcement over to the D.A.

But you have to support it with some argument other than, "Because I speak personally on behalf of the Almighty True God and you must Obey." Legislation formulated on such grounds are the mustard seeds of theocracy, a form of polity favored by America's enemies.

Obama's speech is simply a reminder of a few glaringly obvious historical facts of which Dobson evidently insists on remaining ignorant, which proves Obama's point precisely, hence the self-defeating, humiliatingly ironic quality of Dobson's reaction.

Rational people probably need to start ignoring anachronistic cranks like Dobson and Hagee and Swaggart and the rest or else consign them back to their bells and their sandwich boards.

While I'm suspicious of "leaders" on general principle — Al Gore's repeated invocation of the term to describe Obama during his endorsement was downright Orwellian creepy — Obama is demonstrating leadership by laying out the terms of a national discussion, as he did for the Christian group in 2006.

And it's a welcome initiative, given religious dogmatism's often fractious and deleterious effects in this society, something even the Framers of the Constitution were well acquainted with.

Incidentally, Dobson's most recent fit of the vapors did serve at least one useful purpose, apart from their usual entertainment value. It unearthed a speech of Obama's comparing the admonitions of the New Testament with the policies of the Department of Defense.

It's not something you hear from a candidate for the U.S. presidency very often and it's refreshing as hell. That sort of talk is guaranteed to inflame the Dobsonian followers of the Prince of Peace but politically moderate Christians are guaranteed to respond well.

And if they are disillusioned Republicans or otherwise undecided, then hopefully Dobson's hysterics cement the deal for Obama.

'My faith is better than yours' — McCain

"The Constitution established the U.S. as a Christian Nation."

— Candidate for President John McCain

"[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

— U.S. Constitution, Art. VI Sec. 1 Cl. 3

Jeremiah Wright: Enough already

Enough with the Jeremiah Wright already. Why is this guy even news? He's a preacher. What do you expect from preachers? Crazy ass mofo shit.

Besides, Wright hasn't said anything mo fo' sho crazier than the wacky knuckleheads John McCain chillz wit'. Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment on America because some gay people were planning on having a parade in New Orleans?

I thought that's what you did in New Orleans.

Compared to a blunt assessment of the occasional effects of U.S. foreign policy, that's not just crazy, that's bat-shittery. Yet I don't see Anderson Cooper convening a nightly tribunal of nine to endlessly dissect the inanities of John Hagee and the rest of the megachurch televangelizers, any of whom on any given day will come up with something ten times stupider than anything Jeremiah Wright ever said in his life, in Barack Obama's presence or otherwise.

Dr. Glenn P. Hastedt is a professor of political science at James Madison University in Virginia. Hastedt wrote a book, now in its seventh edition, called American Foreign Policy: Past, Present, Future. It's one of the definitive surveys and a "required text." After conducting an exhaustive review of U.S. foreign policy drawing on a myriad of sources reflecting every conceivable perspective, Dr. Hastedt provides a conclusion summarizing a number of the dominant views of U.S. hegemony — in other words, the "common wisdom." He calls one of them the 'America as Balancer' view:

[T]he United States must learn to live with uncertainty. Absolute security is an unattainable objective and one that produces only imperial overstretch. In sum, the America as Balancer perspective holds that ... the primary national security threats to the United States are self-inflicted. They take the form of a proliferation of security commitments designed to protect America's economic interests.

Now, tell me how that isn't just a rigorously academic way of saying, "the chickens may come home to roost"? Al-Qaeda hit the WTC for a reason. Remember bin Laden's ghoulish disavowal of the innocence of the WTC victims, because they were U.S. taxpayers? Not because they needed converting to Islam.

It's a blinding glimpse of the obvious that U.S. foreign policy may have detrimental consequences for the U.S. itself. How could it not, given America's preeminent global position. America will be seen by many people on the other side of the world as oppressors for that reason alone, even before it sets up military bases within a stone's throw of the Kaaba.

Is that to say that America shouldn't establish a military presence in the Middle East? Not necessarily; only that there will be consequences, and those consequences may include retaliations in the form of 9/11. How is that even controversial? Those are standard considerations for the average competent actor in international relations, especially these days.

Jeremiah Wright is a preacher and it's his job to detect the Hand of God in everything and then tell anyone within bellowing distance all about it. Never mind that he can't prove there even is a "God," he just assumes it and furthermore assumes its constant involvement in the affairs of humans. That's what preachers do.

Sometimes they even relate the details of personal conversations they've had with God (preachers may waive the deity-preacher privilege; God may not, which is one of the reasons why you never hear from Him). And if I'm not mistaken, God has been communicating his displeasure with various warring tribes at least since the World was created 6,000 years ago.

So why does it come as any surprise to anyone that Jeremiah Wright would presume to articulate God's displeasure with certain aspects of U.S. foreign policy? And why are the surprised the same ones that venerate Ronald Reagan, who, much like John Hagee, consulted an ergot-poisoning-fueled nightmare called the Book of Revelation to fire his own End Times hallucinations? And whose necromancing First Lady consulted with astrologers.

Whereas John Hagee's "god damn Americas" come in the form of otherwise rationally explainable tropical weather disturbances that cripple half the country, Pastor Wright's candid observations on foreign policy have nothing on Hagee's demented fantasies.

Wright is playing to an audience and his main purpose is as a motivational speaker. It's a black schtick, which is cool, but his delivery is lame-on-arrival. That 'white people ain't got no rhythm' bit got old a long time ago. And I ask again, then how come Miles Davis got up at five in the morning to go round up Gerry Mulligan and Gil Evans when they were recording Birth Of The Cool? Because Miles wanted soulless cats who couldn't dance?

But that's just my opinion. Who am I to say that Barack Obama may have enjoyed the hell out of Wright's act, but that he shouldn't have? Personally I prefer Chris Rock or Richard Pryor, but hey.

Wright surely has a right to get up there and defend himself against the stunningly irresponsible manipulations of his larger context by the working press. But it seems to me he's doing few people any favors by adopting that old-timey strutting preacher stance, as he did in "taking" questions (gee, thanks) at the National Press Club the other day. That schtick is just straight up passé. As is this whole preacher business in its entirety, if you ask me. Perhaps recent developments will convince politicians to avoid them completely in future.

eta: Mike Mathias is thinking along similar lines this morning.

"Our" Lord? Oy, vey iz mir.

Last Tuesday, the sheriff of Burnett County, Dean Roland, issued a letter on government stationery trumpeting a two-hour prayer breakfast at a restaurant in the county seat, Siren, on May 1. The featured speaker is none other than Mike Gableman. Sheriff Roland writes:

Judge Gableman is a man who is deeply committed to our Lord, his religion and his profession.

Excuse me? Assuming Sheriff Roland is referring to Jesus Christ (or Allah, for that matter), that is not "our Lord," nor especially is Jesus Christ the "Lord" of Burnett, Milwaukee, or even Ashland County.

He's certainly not my "Lord," and I don't believe he's the Lord of any of my Jewish friends either. Why in the Sam Hill would Sheriff Roland use official government stationery to declare such a thing?

None too bright, that's for sure. Needless to say, Madison's Freedom From Religion Foundation has lodged a complaint. I'm not sure I'd go so far as the FFRF's wholesale condemnation of the prayer breakfast, but it's hardly appropriate — to say the least — for the expression "our Lord" to appear on official government stationery.

Falwell returns from the grave

Senator McCain hits the fruitcake trifecta.

Preachers gone wild

The latest right-wing consternation has to do with a fellow called Jeremiah Wright, who, they say, is Senator Barack Obama's "pastor." Some teevee clips have surfaced featuring Wright articulating radical politics and fulminating against social injustice in America.

The nut-wings are falling all over themselves insisting that Obama denounce Wright and all his works, because he spoke ill of the Bush administration's domestic policy, and we certainly can't have that.

Less consternation has been voiced over Obama's Republican presidential rival and fellow U.S. Senator, John McCain. McCain has lately been cavorting with John Hagee, a Grade-A delusional fundamentalist fruitcake and more recently yet another, Rod Parsley.

Parsley, who McCain describes as his "spiritual guide," raves and rants about Islam and calls on his fellow Christians to wage war against the competing Abrahamic religion, which he claims is "false." Few things are as ridiculous and amusing as one purveyor of superstition declaring it a better superstition than some other.

The Republican propensity for presidential "spiritual guides" dates back at least to the sainted Ronald Reagan, who consulted astrologers, Biblical prophecy, and other styles of necromancy to determine foreign policy.

Why is anybody surprised by preachers talking nonsense? Talking nonsense is what they do for a living. People should be more concerned about presidents and presidential candidates retaining "spiritual guides," if you ask me. That's what's disturbing.

This country was founded on principles of reason during the Age of Enlightenment. Why drag it back into the dark ages now.

Waterlogged straw man sinks in think tank

A man in a "think tank" opines, purportedly in addressing supporters of appointing — rather than electing — State Supreme Court Justices:

The conceit inherent in their position lies with their elevated view of the Supreme Court. Supporters of appointed judges apparently believe in the concept of "judicial supremacy," which gives the Court heightened importance over the other two branches of state government.

Um, no. It has to do with the unique role of judges compared to politicians bought and paid for by interest groups, not their "heightened" or "supremist" role. But thanks for coming out.

While truly impartial justice may be an unattainable ideal, it's an ideal nonetheless, and ideals are not so easily discarded by people clutching soggy straw men in so-called think tanks.

(Hey, at least Patrick McIlheran is impressed.)

Another neocon double standard

Milwaukee blogger and funkmaster the Brew City Brawler raises a valid question which shames me that I didn't think of meself, since it's right up in one of my favorite bailiwicks.

About a year ago, then-presidential candidate John Edwards became involved in a PR kerfuffle over his association with one Amanda Marcotte, whom he'd hired as a campaign staffer. It seems Ms. Marcotte, at her own blog Pandagon, had penned some vulgate vulgar characterizations of the Catholic Church's teachings on contraception (together with at least one accurate one: "ancient mythology").

At the time, naturally, the conservative blogosphere went into Gamma 9 outrage mode over Marcotte's rhetoric. Even beloved Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran delighted in further limning the association between Marcotte and Edwards. (Via, incidentally, the idiotic National Review Online scribe Kathryn Jean Lopez, the likes of whom must have sent NR founder William F. Buckley, Jr. spinning into his grave.)

Nowadays, however, there issues nary a peep nor squeak from McIlheran over fellow right-wing guy John McCain's embrace of the "Reverend" John C. Hagee, a Texas-sized fundamentalist buffoon with a Satan-sized distaste for the Vatican.

This is no wiseass feminazi blogger lambasting the Pope's designs on her fallopian tubes, this is a devout and inspired Man of Christ speaking further to the inerrant authority of God's Holy Word.

Whither McIlheran, the Brawler wonders. Apparently McIlheran has been otherwise engaged in a mini-crusade of his own, in a failed attempt at making a religious hypocrite of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

McIlheran's problem, as usual, is that some of his readers are smarter than he is, in particular — not surprisingly — those that disagree with him. There's Andrew, for instance, who takes issue with McIlheran's impotent ploys:

Trying to cast your critics as spiritual voids disrespectful to your particular religious creed is preposterous. Slinging these phony labels around only bolsters your "pity party" bunker mentality where the poor Christians are holding out against Nero and his immoral onslaught. Seriously ... where do you come up with this martyr complex? You're missing the point of my post, and twisting it, but I suppose that's what you're intending to do.

Poor McIlheran, busted again. He really should just stick to the usual swooning manlove for Milton Friedman.

Brawlin' the Shark

Enjoy.

The ol' Straight Talk Express has sure done a number of u-turns since 2000, when Senator McCain condemned the similarly idiotic sectarian policies of Bob Jones University as "not American." If the Straight Talk Express was anything but a metaphor, there'd be clear probable cause to pull it over on suspicion of drunken driving. — some wiseacre

This post approved by
Americans For Bush-Hagee '08.

Lies and more Damned statistics

U.S. is still overwhelmingly Christian, study finds

— Los Angeles Times

Protestants Verging on Becoming Minorities

— U.S. News & World Report

A caveat or two about the new Pew study
— Dallas Morning News

Mike McGee: the transcripts

In other Wisconsin primary news,

Campaigning from behind bars, a defiant Milwaukee Ald. Michael McGee led eight challengers to survive Tuesday's primary election.

Ald. McGee has been in custody since last May and faces charges for an array of State and federal offenses.

Here's a few highlights from McGee's appearance January 10 before Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Dennis P. Moroney, on a motion to have his then-attorney Glenn Givens withdraw from his case.

THE DEFENDANT: Good morning, Your Honor. I'll greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. ...

THE DEFENDANT: Your Honor, I just want you to understand that since I've been in custody and the State collaborated with the Federal government to hold me in Federal custody and to the Federal government's - -

THE COURT: Ba-ba-ba. Hold on. I'm not in collusion with any Federal government.

THE DEFENDANT: I understand that. I've released - -

THE COURT: Don't use those words.

THE DEFENDANT: I didn't mean to say that. The U.S. attorney's office and the district attorney's office.

THE COURT: You're using thaumaturgic words and you don't know the meaning of them, sir.

How awesome is that? The court tells the defendant he's using words he doesn't understand, by using a word nobody understands.

Then, after receiving a mini-lecture on the attorney-client relationship ("and you guys better kiss and make up"), McGee pushes the court again:

THE DEFENDANT: Your Honor, I didn't get to complete my statement.

THE COURT: It sounded like it to me. You stopped.

THE DEFENDANT: I'm getting badgered by Mr. Givens and yourself.

THE COURT: No one's badgering you. I've heard enough from you right now. Don't give me that I haven't given you your say. You've been saying things which are completely outrageous, and I'm not going to stand for that, because this case is going to be based on fact, it's going to be based on fact, not emotions, sympathy or passion, understand that.

And there will be no more references in this courtroom concerning anything about God or anything like that, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I will not allow you to try to invoke sympathy or prejudice or passion in or belief in Christians that you have some great or some position with the Lord one way or the other, and that's for you and your Lord but not for sharing in this courtroom which is a public sector. So understand that as well.

The Court will deny the motion ...

The court since granted a similar motion on January 31 based on an irreconciliable breakdown in attorney-client communications, and Ald. McGee has other lawyers now. And a place on the April 1 ballot.

The sin of pride (or not)

I swear, you could set your watch by these people. Speaking in Milwaukee yesterday, Michelle Obama remarked that, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." Cue conservosphere (actually it's more of a flat earth) going full bore apeshit.

Notice she said "really proud of my country." A reasonable interpretation is that Ms. Obama has always been proud of her country, but events of late have increased, or altered in some meaningful way (to her) her pride in her country. But no. The unreasonable interpretation is far more convenient: she's never been proud of her country, until now — when she got to Brewtown, no less.

The Carpetbagger Report has compiled a few of the predictable higher profile reactions here. (Incidentally, by "high profile" I mean the likes of the collection of barely literate fruitcakes afforded speech by the National Review Online, where one can accomplish the considerable feat of being both high profile and low brow at once.)

Closer to home, our own Rick Esenberg has entered the fray, mirroring almost identically the previous expressions of outrage. And even he falls for the unreasonable interpretation. Since he's a lawyer, and lawyers are trained to be especially keen deconstructors of language, then one explanation is he's falling for it deliberately.

Because Esenberg has been on a weird anti-Obama Crusade (his word, his capitalization) recently, during which he's attempted to make connections between Senator Obama and such disparate figures as Che Guevara and Jesus Christ. Perhaps he's been gripped by The Fear that John McCain will never have the opportunity to appoint a few more Scalias to the Supreme Court, and Ms. Obama's words just dropped like manna from Heaven into his waiting lap.

He enumerates a number of events from American history, and wonders aloud how Ms. Obama couldn't be proud of these achievements. Did she say she wasn't? Of course not. But since when did such subtleties — subtleties of the flying mallet variety, that is — ever discourage the tendentious galloping hordes of the fabricated outrage brigade?

Did it once occur to any of these people that notions of "patriotism" and nationalism generally are necessarily subjective and nuanced?

I know it hasn't occurred to "joe stalin," another of Esenberg's "readers" (the word is in quotes because he can't). In response to this rather bland and uncontroversial observation,

I don't know about you, but many of us don't judge "patriotism" or commitment to constitutional principles by how many flags a politician sews onto her pantsuit,

our man of steel reacts thusly:

"it said", in typical liberal fashion makes disrespect for America the Pledge of Allegience [sic] and our Flag into positives for his lib candidate. Being unpatriotic is patriotic to libs.

And I do mean "react," as in "reactionary," and I do mean "reactionary" in its least flattering sense.

My initial thoughts on seeing Esenberg's dressing down of Ms. Obama on what appears to be his perception of her lacking sufficient "pride," were of, naturally, the Bible. Why? Because Esenberg's view of, as he puts it, "politics as religion" is as something that is "dangerous." Conversely, however, Esenberg has often defended "religion as politics" as something to be encouraged; indeed, something to be admired, since religion apparently embodies all the finest morality.

More specifically, the Book of Proverbs, where the Lord is said to hate "a proud look," and to consider it an abomination. Doubtless a skilled apologist can distinguish between the Proverbial pride and an understanding of the politically correct patriotic and nationalistic pride that conservative Republicans expect and demand — from others, of course. We may see. Or not.

In the meantime, consider Obama's message of change in the light of Bush 43 administration-era "you're either with us or you're against us" false dichotomies, or Bush's bossman Richard "Deferment Dick" Cheney openly questioning the devotion to country of people who actually volunteered to fight on behalf of America in Viet Nam.

If that's the direction of change he's talking about, then I'm all for it.

Debate notable for lack of debate

Mike Plaisted is not going to be pleased with me. Neither is Renato Umali. I really wanted to get down to the Bremen Café in Riverwest last night, where both of them were performing. But I've been fighting off a nasty cold for the last few days and wound up snoozing under a blanket for most of the evening. Next time, gentlemen, I promise.

Renato is an easygoing guy, and I'm sure he'll forgive me. He probably won't even take back my 2005 Umali Award (long story). So is Plaisted, I imagine, and so will he, I hope. But maybe not when he finds out what I ended up doing instead of catching his acoustic set at the Bremen: I watched his arch-nemesis, Rick Esenberg, on the teevee.

Esenberg, along with three other local worthies, appeared on Milwaukee Public Television's long-running panel discussion series, 4th Street Forum, to debate religion and politics. Only one problem: they were all religious! And things didn't even start getting close to feisty until there were only about ten minutes left in the one-hour programme.

The Shark's fellow panelists were the Interaith Conference's Marcus White (he of "Coexist controversy" fame), Susan Vergeront, a former State legislator and "Christian Nurturer," and Renee Crawford, associate director of the local ACLU.

Ms. Crawford was pretty cool, although she didn't appear much inclined to mix it up with her fellow panelists. Man, I wish I'd been there, if only to pass Renee a few talking points. As a friend of mine comically described — I believe it was — Duran-Leonard II, "The lack of violence was sickening."

Some of the discussion was directed toward the religiosity of the current and past presidential candidates, and the appropriateness of their advertising their various religious beliefs as some kind of qualification for public office. To her credit, Ms. Crawford mentioned the No Religious Test Clause of the Constitution, but Esenberg the lawyer was quick to point out that this is purely an "institutional" proscription, in that it only prevents actions by the government.

The obvious response to that is two-fold: (1) the language of that clause is among the most forceful in the Constitution, and it's not unreasonable to extend its admonition as a directive, or at least a suggestion, to the populace and (2) the Constitution famously begins with the words, "We the people," not "We the lawyers." See (1).

Esenberg finally did get a chance, however, to enunciate his curious hypothesis that government neutrality toward religion is impossible, and its pretense should be abandoned, because government's influence is nowadays so pervasive that no matter what it does, it's bound to offend someone and possibly even interfere with somebody's "free exercise" of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

He gave, as a rather unfortunate example in my view, the idea of public schools informing students that sexual orientation is primarily an objective matter of biological imperative and should be regarded as such may impinge on some students' rights to freely exercise their own religious beliefs that gay people are icky and Hellbound.

Esenberg was challenged by a woman in the audience, who essentially asked — and I'm paraphrasing liberally here, but I believe this was the import of her inquiry — 'Do you mean to tell us, Mr. Esenberg, that secular notions of respect for individual human dignity should be sacrificed in favor of atavistic devotion to ignorance and bigotry?'

Score. You go, lady in the gray sweater.

Other than that, there was little friskiness to be had, and my own favorite religio-political subject, creationism, didn't pop up until nearly the end of the show, when Pastor Vergeront made some sideways appeal to making room in science for irrationality, and lamented the fact that creationists are often not treated respectfully.

Now, I'm no Christian Nurturer myself, but it's my understanding that the man they call Christ had little patience for liars, hypocrites, and deceivers either. At that point, Ms. Crawford suggested that "intelligent design" be taught as a separate course, which begs the question, "What will they do after the three minutes it takes to explain, and enumerate the evidence for, 'intelligent design'?"

They need to have me on that show. I could shake 'em up a bit. Or at least get myself Tasered by security for insolence.

Next exit: Fictionberg

dueling billboards

h/t PZ.

Super Tiw's Day

Here's a worthwhile piece at ABCNews.com, concerning a number of questions that might be put to at least two of the remaining aspirants to the presidency, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. One in particular, directed at the fomer Arkansas governor, merits a bit of additional commentary:

Article 19 of the Arkansas state constitution states, "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court." Although it and similar laws in other states are not enforced, do you support their formal repeal?

It amazes me that such completely irrational nonsense continues to exist on the books, let alone that it was put there in the first place.

The latter component, dealing with competency to stand as a witness in court, is particularly bizarre. While it derives from an arcane notion in the law of evidence (since abandoned) that a witness' credibility and reliability for stating truthful observations somehow obtain from "swearing to god," it utterly contradicts more reasonable notions of credibility relied on by the government almost daily.

When, for example, criminal suspects are questioned by the authorities, their statements are deemed to be especially credible because those statements are made "against their penal interest." In other words, the truthfulness of the statements is assessed against the suspect's informed knowledge that those statements may well end up putting her or him in the slammer, or, in some States, prostrate upon the lethal injection slab.

Why not, similarly, the testimony of an atheist? Because for a large majority of Americans, a declaration of non-belief in god has less to do with such temporal inconveniences as life in prison or state-sanctioned homicide but the skewering of the heathen on the eternal rotisserie of hellfire and damnation. So, for the believer at least, what statement could possibly be more representative of "against their penal interest" than "I don't believe in gods"?

Much religion is silly enough on its own without injecting it into politics or worse, codifying its imaginary prescriptions into the laws of the land, where we all live for the time being.

Race and gender on MLK Day

All of the race/gender politicking among some of the candidates for president is annoying, and ludicrous.

I don't buy this race business; as far as I know, there's one "race": homo sapiens. Some of its constituents have really dark skin, some of them have really light skin. And along the continuum between each, there's every shade possible. Any line drawn perpendicular to the axis of the continuum is necessarily arbitrary and ultimately meaningless. To paraphrase Warren Beatty's character in Bulworth, 'Just everybody fuck everybody else until we're all the same color.'

So there are groups of individuals within the species that share physical characteristics dissimilar from other groups of individuals. So what? That's a function of population genetics. Obviously those genetic characteristics that are shared within a group that inhabits a geographical area separate from another group are going to propagate within that group. This has been going on for millions of years and it's about time for broader recognition of the fact.

That the law recognizes race as an identifiable characteristic is, for the most part, lamentable. On the other hand, that the law recognizes the fact that some people use fantasies based on "race" to discriminate against other people is not so lamentable. Because race is little more than a social construct issuing from fear, ignorance, and superstition and it's correct that the law should intervene on behalf of those who are discriminated against on that basis. But it's quaint and erroneous notions of race that forced the requirement of those legal protections in the first place.

By the same token and given the unfortunate history of "race relations" in this country, African Americans are right to formulate social policy based on that history. That's why Chris Rock gets to say 'nigger' and Dog the Bounty Hunter doesn't, and why a Black Caucus is understandable while a White Caucus is offensive. However, I would like to see those distinctions eventually erased as well. (Which is not to say that Chris Rock should tone it down in the meantime.)

Similar considerations may be applied to the popular ideas of gender and sexuality. There are relentlessly heterosexual people, and relentlessly homosexual people. Again, a continuum exists between both with every possible permutation along the way (many of which I don't care to contemplate). Even the physical manifestations of gender are not always clear: consider those born with ambiguous genitalia. Such are the operations of nature. Deal with it, rather than reacting with horror, loathing, and political pandering.

Also, Fred Thompson is bald and Rudy Giuliani is nearsighted, but I don't hear either struggling over the hairless, myopic vote (okay, they're both lobbying for the myopic vote, but in the slightly less literal sense of the word. They're Republicans, after all).

Now for some quality civil disobedience.