surprise, surprise. not.

[jrtom]

courtesy of the NY Times:

Four Top Officers Cleared by Army in Prison Abuses

Commissioner Leaving U.S. Voting Agency

"All four of us had to work without staff, without offices, without resources," Mr. Soaries said. "I don't think our sense of personal obligation has been matched by a corresponding sense of commitment to real reform from the federal government."

Comments

Read those...

[fdmts.livejournal.com]

Also, there was a bit about how Cheney is weighing in in favor of getting rid of fillibusters. He was not quoted as saying "Advise and consent means bite the pillow and remember your duty, bitches!"

Fortunately, they spent a while talking about how:

(a) The only person charged in the Sept 11 killings has pled guilty, but in a very sneaky way. He admitted that he was part of a plot that never happened, not the planes that got off the ground.

(b) The new pope is apparently the guy who had to read and deal with abuse allegations for the last several years. I expect that he has solid perspective on that, and it might lead to some interesting changes

Re: Read those...

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

That's certainly an interesting legal defense; I'd feel better if that didn't tend to feed directly into the Bush administration's atmosphere of paranoia. ("See? SEE? It could have been worse! There could be thousands of them out there with nukular bombs in their shoes!")

My understanding is that the one-time Cardinal Ratzinger was actually fairly dismissive of the abuse allegations, and was a major part of the reason why the Catholic Church was slow and reluctant to respond.

Benedict

[fdmts.livejournal.com]

Well, he was also a member of the Hitler youth, albeit at a place and time where failure to do so could have gotten him killed. My opinion is that nobody who was ever a member of the Hitler youth gets to be pope. Sorry. It's not fair, it's not evenhanded, but it's my opinion.

The NYT article today mentioned that his initial dismissive reaction was towards the massive press coverage the scandal was getting, relative to the number and merit of the actual accusations. As the number of cases expanded he changed his tune.

How about this bit of tactical shifting: NYT article. According to a doctor I know, the only case where this description is applicable is when a non-viable pregnancy ("incompatible with life" appears to be the technical term) is induced and delivered in a controlled setting, once it's clear that the baby has no chance of long term survival. Then the parents get to grieve with the baby for the couple of hours that it takes for the baby to gasp its last.

The example said doctor used was pretty horrifying and convincing, but it also matches the description in the article "the child was breathing, the heart was beating, and the child continued to live for several hours."

This rule seems to obligate the hospital to provide a $20,000 neonatal intervention which is doomed to failure ("incompatible with life") and would have the side effect of preventing the parents from grieving with the baby while it passes.

These Republican bastards make me sick.

Re: Benedict

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Because of the circumstances, I'm not inclined to immediately dismiss Ratzinger as appropriate based on the Hitler Youth thing; it would depend on how it affected him. I can imagine it actually making him a better pope, in a way, if it gave him a better appreciation for human weakness in adverse circumstances, and if he treated his position as a means to prevent similar things in the future.

You could be right about his position in re: abuse cases. I'll reserve judgement.

I had read the "born-alive" article; yes, that legislation seems primarily tactical to me. (I'm a little disturbed at how easily the 2002 law passed, too.)

On the other hand, I'm cynically amused by the fact that (a) Smith couldn't come up with criteria to distinguish a "fetus" from a "born-alive infant", and (b) the law's criteria seem to be "if it twitches at all, it's born alive".

Sometime soon I think I need to write a something about the need for an objective standard for viability, for purposes of informing moral decisions regarding abortion. (A key point is going to be that I expect the standard to evolve over time.)

Re: Benedict

[fdmts.livejournal.com]

objective standard for viability

Such texts exist in the medical world, but I think it's a valuable thought process for all of us to go through.

You know my penchant for starting off from extrema and reasoning towards the grey zone in the middle. In this case my favorite examples are:

(clearly non-viable) - Baby has no brain, but a functional brain stem. ( Encephalocele, the extreme version)

(clearly viable, but irritating) - Baby is colicky. I truly fear the day we can test, in-utero for colic.

Somewhere in the middle between "incompatible with life" and "going to cry a lot and keep me awake" is a reasonable moral line.

It's particularly poignant for me this time of year, as I thin my garden. In order to guarantee a decent outcome, I overseed. Then, as the seedlings come up, I select the hardiest ones and yank out the ones around them. Any plants that sprout too close together draw my eye, and most of them die on the compost heap. Admittedly, they're plants and thus not worthy of moral consideration (gotta draw the line somewhere), but I enjoy my meditations in my garden. Who am I to choose which ones live and die? Who can foretell the time of the gardeners arrival?

I'm mostly being snide about the Hitler Youth thing. It may have made him a better man and more sensitive to the horrid possibility of enthusiastic jingoinsm. On the other hand, if he's going to apply arbitrary moral standards to my life, I'll do the same to him.