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

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.