Category Archives: Random Blogging

Is Obama’s Nobel Prize Unconstitutional?

That’s the argument some right-wing lawyers are making. My own reaction was not dissimilar to that of the Florida congressman who said “If Obama cured world hunger, the Republicans would accuse him of causing overpopulation.”

Jack Balkin, the eminent Yale legal scholar who blogs at balkinization, says it more eloquently–and more authoritatively.

This episode has led me to two conclusions. First, the Washington Post Op-Ed section does not appear to have a lawyer on hand to keep it from embarrassment. It does not take much research to discover that the argument in this piece is frivolous. But no research was done.

Second, I have noticed an increasing lack of seriousness among some members of the modern conservative movement. We see it in the tea party protests, in the work of talk show hosts and political commentators, but now even in the work of accomplished lawyers and intellectuals who should know better. It is one thing to disagree with a sitting president’s policies, but in our deeply polarized and poisonous political environment, an increasing number of politicians, operatives, and intellectuals now proclaim almost reflexive opposition to anything associated with President Obama or anything he does, says, or supports. Indeed, in this case, Rotunda and Pham have gone well past arguing that things that President Obama favors are unconstitutional; now they argue that things are unconstitutional because somebody wants to honor him.

It is increasingly difficult to parody what politicians and intellectuals will now say or do. Anything one can think of is already topped by the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal editorial pages.

This may be good politics, but I doubt it. It is certainly not sound legal argument.

We Seem to be Going in the Wrong Direction

Is there something in the water?

In Louisiana, a Justice of the Peace refuses to perform inter-racial weddings, insisting that such “racial mixing” produces children who are not accepted by either whites or blacks.

In Paraguay, two women were tortured and killed after being accused of being witches. According to reports, Dorotea Colmán, 50, and María Espínola, 23, died after being submitted to three days of brutal torture by members of the Bya Guaraní ethnic group in Santa Lucía, 220 miles north of Asunción. The women were hung upside down, beaten with sticks and had boiling water poured on them.

In Congress, we are regularly treated to comments by elected officials– Michele Bachman and someone named King from Iowa come to mind, but there are plenty of others–that are not simply stupid (that would be a very long list!) but paranoid and delusional.

Anyone have an explanation for this explosion of irrational behaviors?

Maybe in this age of blogging and 24/7 news cycles, we’re just more aware of crazies who’ve always been around. I hope that’s the answer, because otherwise, I feel as if I went to bed in the 21st Century and awoke in the 16th.

This Says It All

I was about to post on the surprising award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama when I read this.

It expresses my own thoughts on the matter, and does it better than I could.

Excuse Me??

According to an article in the Huffington Post, In 1568 Montgomery Highway v. City of Hoover, the Supreme Court of Alabama this week upheld the constitutionality of an Alabama statute prohibiting the sale of “any device designed … primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.” The law was targeted primarily at the sale of such objects as vibrators and dildos.”

Evidently, the Alabama Court agrees with Justice Scalia that the Bill of Rights doesn’t protect a right to privacy, and that it is government’s job to impose religious morality on the citizenry.

Next thing you know, the state will post signs telling us that such activities will cause us to go blind!
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-r-stone/sex-and-sin_b_308732.html

Inspiring Places

It’s really difficult to listen to the news without concluding that humanity—or at least civilization—is doomed. From Afghanistan to healthcare, from global climate change to the global economy, the focus is on the massive problems we face and the gigantic barriers to solving them. For every thoughtful analysis of a situation by someone who actually knows something about it, there seem to be twenty bloviating know-nothings trying to compensate for cluelessness with volume.

It’s enough to make you climb into bed and pull the covers up over your head.

So it helps if, every once in a while, we remind ourselves that news is by definition that which is out of the ordinary. As the old saying goes, when a dog bites a man, that’s not news. When a man bites a dog, that is.

We hear about hatred and conflict: racial strife, homophobia, religious intolerance. We don’t hear about the innumerable people of good will whose daily activities include interfaith outreach, efforts on behalf of racial reconciliation, or protecting children from homophobia.

Which brings me to the Spirit and Place Festival, now in its 14th year. Between November 6th and 15th, there will be some 40 programs sponsored by over 100 collaborating organizations, all centered on this year’s theme, “Inspiring Places.”

Spirit & Place grew out of a Polis Center project in the 1990s that examined the relationship between religious practices and urban life. The idea was to explore how the places we live shape our identity. Spirit & Place programs are intended to be “public conversations” rather than lectures or speeches. As their website puts it, “Its mission is to promote civic engagement, respect for diversity, thoughtful reflection, public imagination, and enduring change through creative collaboration among arts, humanities, and religion.”

Inspiring places can be great works of architecture, or humble neighborhoods. Inspiring places can also be gatherings of supportive people focused on improving some aspect of our civic life, or providing a safe and nurturing place for people who need sanctuary and encouragement. Falling into that latter category is PFLAG—Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays—which is once again hosting a Spirit and Place event.

On Sunday, November 8, the Indianapolis PFLAG chapter will team with the Indiana Youth Group and St. Luke’s United Methodist Church to sponsor a discussion about nontraditional families. Reverend Barbara Child of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Indianapolis will help guide a discussion about how people make places inspiring. She will discuss the role of safety and security in a place of sanctuary, and how ordinary people with loving and generous hearts make places inspiring for others.  

PFLAG is one of literally hundreds of organizations and voluntary associations working to make our community better, safer and more nurturing for all of us.

We need to remind ourselves that, for every self-important pundit hurling invective, there are millions of  good people giving their time, effort and money to improve the human environment.

Those people create truly inspiring places.