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October, 2005 |
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October 31, 2005 - Her birthday is Halloween. She just turned 15. She is an eighth grader. She is pregnant. The father is 19 and functions at the intellectual level of an 8 year old. When her mother discovered that the girl is pregnant she arranged for the boy to move in with them. She knew that her 14 year old daughter and the 19 year old fourth grader were “doing it”. Her father knew that his daughter was pregnant and that the 19 year old was the father. Until the police became involved the father did not believe that the boy sleeping on the floor of his daughter’s bedroom was having sex with her. Given this set of facts – taken from life in the almost exclusively Caucasian rural Midwest – should the law compel this child to carry the pregnancy to term and deliver a baby next May? The converse of that question is this: should the law compel the child to abort the fetus? If your answer to the first question is yes, the law should demand that the 15 year old carry the pregnancy to term how then do you provide for the child she is going to bear? How will you insure that the child to be will have a quality of life that you can call adequate? How do you deal with the fact that neither prospective parent is endowed with the ability to care for this infant? Is it your answer that the State must take custody of the child and compel an adoption of the infant? Are you willing to take the risk as an adoptive parent that the infant will not inherit its parent’s genetic disabilities? Are you willing, as a member of an enlightened society, to pay the taxes necessary to provide the child with a minimum quality of life and opportunity at public expense; to provide it with quality health care; to insure it educational resources to meet its special needs?. ......click here for entire article October 28, 2005 - It appears that the Republican campaign slogan for 2006 will be “Not Guilty”. In a demonstration of the Constitutional principle of separation of powers the need to plead has struck both the Congress and the Executive branches. It goes deeper an obscure White House aide in the dock who can’t decide what constitutes “doing business” when he is taken on junkets by a lobbyist with access to unlimited cash. A Texas District Attorney looks into a scheme to launder corporate money through the Republican National Committee to avoid the State’s ban on corporations contributing to State politicians. When indictments are returned the cry is that it is a partisan witch hunt; its all political; I did nothing wrong! And by the way – “Not Guilty” ......click here for entire article October 25, 2005 - A decade ago the Republican’s in Congress were in full hue and cry. The President, they shouted, abused his office by obstructing justice and lying to cover up his peccadillo with Monica Lewinsky. Those are high crimes and misdemeanors they said and Bill Clinton must be impeached. To every thing (spin spin spin) there is a season (spin spin spin) and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to impeach and a time to indict and, if Kay Bailey Hutchinson is to be believed, a time to leave off indicting. Senator Hutchinson is out in front of the Republican Dervishes spinning with all her might. If indictments come, she says, let them be for “a crime and not some perjury technicality where they could not indict on the crime.” Senator Bailey clearly feels that this is a time to leave off indicting, It was not such a time in 1999 when she said, “The edifice of American jurisprudence rests on the foundation of the due process of law. The mortar in that foundation is the oath. Those who seek to obstruct justice weaken that foundation, and those who violate the oath would tear the whole structure down.” That was a time to impeach for the Senator......click here for entire article October 22, 2005 - As the President exhorts the United Nations to act in the wake of its report of Syrian responsibility for the assassination of Lebanon’s once and future Prime Minister and Wilma churns across the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Katrina and Rita it gives you a sense of Déjà Vu. In the Byzantine world the Bush Administration world events are seen as a launching point for a campaign to reverse the slide in the President’s JAR ratings. Damascus seems as tailor made a diversionary target as was Baghdad four years ago this month. The signs are all there. Lebanon has long suffered from Damascus’ interference with its neighbor. The UN indictment of the Syrian regime seems well grounded – indeed it seems air tight when compared to the Bush Administration’s case for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. As Secretary of State Powell did before her Secretary of State Rice is publicly rattling the US saber telling the world that the President has not ruled out the use of military force against Damascus. It all sounds depressingly familiar .....click here for entire article
October 4, 2005 - John Crawford was on his honeymoon and in the last semester of an undergraduate work at Florida State when his Florida National Guard Unit was called up in the autumn of 2002. His guard unit crossed the border with the Third Infantry Division. They were told that their tour would likely be two months – three at most and they would be home. John Crawford tells their story with an honesty that makes you fell the heat of the Baghdad summer and taste the grit of an Iraqi sandstorm. Let Crawford tell you about the hook. “This hook is the story of a group of college students, American boys who wanted nothing to do with someone else’s war. It is out story. The world hears stories told by reporters and generals who keep extensive notebooks and journals. They carry pens as they walk whereas I carried a machine gun .....click here for entire article |
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