:: And Another Thing...

I'm still on a tear about the right to privacy, aka "the right to be let alone." You know, the whole "the word privacy doesn't appear in the Constitution" schtick. Well, for those who didn't see the trap that argument was setting up (courtesy of Robert Bork), here comes the "its an invented right / the word doesn't appear in the Constitution" argument, part II.

GONZALES: There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away. But it's never been the case, and I'm not a Supreme --

SPECTER: Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The constitution says you can't take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?

GONZALES: I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn't say, "Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas." It doesn't say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by --

SPECTER: You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General.

And so on. The term "separation of church and state" doesn't appear, either. Read more!

:: An Exciting Day

I learned a new word today: clero-fascism. Apparently its been around for a while but up to now I’d completely missed it. It is a more efficient way to say “clerical fascism,” with the added benefit of not conjuring images of goose-stepping administrative assistants. The prefix, clero, means clergy in Spanish and Italian; the other part you know.

An example of the meaning:

“The close alliance of Catholicism and Fascism was not unique to Slovakia, of course. It was found in many other European countries, as well: in pre-war Austria under Dollfuss, in Salazar's Portugal, in Romania under the Iron Guard, in Pavelic’s Croatia, in Horthy’s Hungary, in Vichy France and, of course, under Generalissimo Franco, who called himself “Leader of Spain by the grace of God”. All of these, to varying degrees, exemplified “clerical fascism”, that is to say, “fascist regimes in which clergy played a leading role.”

And of the usage:

“This situation only confirms the position of peace activists and defenders of human rights in Serbia. Our security is endangered by the state as well as by neo-Nazi and clero-fascist individuals and groups.”

Not only am I excited about adding a word to my already fantabulistic vocabulary (have I mentioned 8,000 times my perfect score on the GRE verbal section?  Let's make that 8,001), I also think the term is very useful. Though it appears clero-fascism has been used only in the context of Europe and Christianity, I don’t see why it couldn’t apply to fascists among our homegrown Christian fundamentalists, or fascists of the Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist or what-all else varieties. (Remember, not all fundamentalists are fascists - for example, the Amish).  

Its more wieldy that the “religious-political extremist” some of us have been taught to use, and much less offensive than “Islamo-fascist” as used by Republicans. Using a term that captures both the Taliban and Human Life International gets right to the point – the anti-democratic, anti-choice, wholly intolerant ideology that blends religion and politics and would make religious leaders into political leaders – without besmirching an entire faith.

I plan on using it a lot, even in inappropriate situations. Example:

Waiter: Would you like the chips or the salad with that?
Me:   I don't know.  Are the chips clero-fascists?

- and -

Dr. P: How long have you had that rash?
Me: Ever since I bumped into a clero-fascist at Metro Center.

Clero-fascist. It works for me.  I recommend it.

Read more!

:: Madame Speaker

Maeve is unimpressed. I on the other hand got a little choked-up about the "Madame Speaker" stuff. Did you catch that he said that the "best health care decisions are made not by government and insurance companies, but by patients and their doctors." Except pregnant women, of course. Read more!

:: Faith and Conscience

Asra Q. Nomani writes persuasively in today's Washington Post about domestic violence and contemporary interpretations of the Koran. While she admirably focuses on the specific verse referencing abuse rather than relying on vagueness and generalizations, it is worth noting that a similar discussion concerning the Bible is taking place as well. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently released a report on domestic violence and the influence of the Biblical command that a wife must "obey" her husband:

“Over the centuries questionable assumptions about the relation between men and women, which were supposed to reflect the will of God, have influenced the Church’s interpretation of the Bible, its moral teaching and pastoral practice.. It is a tragic fact that bad theology, in this case a faulty understanding of God and human beings in relationship, can have the effect — whether intended or not — of betraying victims of domestic abuse and encouraging the actions of perpetrators.”

Nomani is right: if you believe that might makes right in the private sphere, most likely you believe in the public sphere as well. This is one of the reasons extremist Muslims in the Middle East sound so very much like extremist Christians in the United States. Read more!

:: President Comma

Wars are fought with commas. They are essential. Here and there is a world leader who does not care about human life, but most do. The only way they can function is to plant commas around the misery they cause, to subordinate the loss of life to a supposedly greater cause.

Not too long ago, I embraced the commas myself. I favored this idiotic war because I thought that the deaths of some would improve -- even save -- the lives of many.

Richard Cohen writes today about the President’s characterization of the “present difficult period in Iraq as ‘just a comma,’” – a mere punctuation mark in a greater tale that will end, no doubt, in some kind of fantastic religious-political triumph that will place the name “Bush” alongside the likes of Alexander the Great and George Washington in the annals of history. Not.

That “comma” was described in a horrifying story in the Guardian. Its exactly what some people – mainly, but not exclusively, the women’s rights and human rights communities – said might happen in Iraq, and yet much, much worse because instead of being a prediction, it is real and happening right now. These are key paragraphs from that lengthy article:

[There] is a violence that would not be possible without a wider, permissive brutalising of women's lives: one that permeates the 'new Iraq' in its entirety. For it is not only the religious militias that have turned women's lives into a living hell - it is, in some measure, the government itself, which has allowed ministries run by religious parties to segregate staff by gender. Some public offices, including ministries, insist on women staff wearing a headscarf at all times. Most serious of all are the death threats women receive for simply working, even in government offices. Zainub - not her real name - works for a ministry in Baghdad. One morning, she said, she arrived at work to find that a letter had been sent to all the women. 'When I opened up the note it said, "You will die. You will die".'

The situation has been exacerbated by the undermining of Iraq's old Family Code, established in 1958, which guaranteed women a large measure of equality in key areas such as divorce and inheritance. The new constitution has allowed the Family Code to be superseded by the power of the clerics and new religious courts, with the result that it is largely discriminatory against women. The clerics have permitted the creeping re-emergence of men contracting multiple marriages, formerly discouraged by the old code. It is these clerics, too, who have permitted a sharp escalation in the 'pleasure marriages'. And it is the same clerics overseeing the rapid transformation of a once secular society - in which women held high office and worked as professors, doctors, engineers and economists - into one where women have been forced back under the veil and into the home. The result is mapped out every day on Iraq's streets and in its country lanes in individual acts of intimidation and physical brutality that build into an awful whole.

So that is life between the commas. I suspect we will be paying for what we've done to these people for a long, long time. Read more!

:: Wicker Man = Wicked Funny

The funniest thing I’ve seen since I watched “I (heart) Huckabees” – and loved it – is the remake of The Wicker Man. The good people of Belgium had to wait until yesterday for this movie to open, and I just couldn’t stay away. It turned out to be hilariously campy, one of those movies that is so bad it makes you laugh, yet not so bad that it is unwatchable.

“The Wicker Man” does not benefit from comparison to another movie about the disappearance of young girl that was filmed in the coastal Northwest and uses the settings of a barn, a ferry and a cistern. “The Ring” had eerily beautiful imagery and an intriguing subtext concerning reproduction and responsibility. “The Wicker Man” has moments of surreal stupidity, as when Nicholas Cage runs through the forest dressed as a bear, and an idiotic subtext of gender-based paranoia.

Reviewers have called this movie misogynist, but that is not quite right. Instead, it is gynephobic. Writer/director Neil LaBute is apparently afraid that all women are evil, conniving bitches who would like nothing more than to lure him towards a gory doom. But the things that LaBute finds scary – a lot of blond women in the same place, “goddess” worship, organic honey – are just not scary to normal people. Thus the movie plays as a parody – think “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” or Monty Python’s vorpal Rabbit. And after a while, the obtuseness of Cage’s character forces the audience’s sympathies to shift to the evil women of Summerfield Island; I soon found myself rooting for their every ploy.

Ultimately, LaBute creates a protagonist who is simply too dumb to live; when the movie reaches its sadistic final minutes, death really does seem like the blessing the women of Summerfield island believe it to be - even if our hero is too stupid, rude and flammable to appreciate it. Read more!

:: Not Again!

The fist-sized yellow and black Yariguies Brush-Finch, topped with an orange plume, was found ... high atop the country's eastern Andean range in Santander province.

At first glance, this looks like the kind of innocent story any grade school science teacher would be happy to discuss with her class. But look closer.

The timing of this story is highly suspicious. Why did evidence of this bird suddenly surface now, four weeks before the election?

And what's so "new" about this bird anyway? Hasn't it been "evolving" over millions of years, as the secularists would have us believe? It is hard to see just what is so newsworthy about a picture of a bird in Colombia - which sharp observers will notice just happens to share a continent with Venezuela!

Once again the enviro-terrorists, the so-called "scientists," the liberal media and the Democratic Party have conspired to spread their toxic hate to an unsuspecting America. Once again these traitors give succor to America's enemies by drawing attention from the President's plans to safeguard our nation. I, for one, am appalled.

And don't think for a minute that Al Gore isn't lurking in Jakarta right now with a couple tons of dry ice. Read more!