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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Friday, May 04, 2007

Another Final Itinerary For An Oregon Soldier 

...at this moment, as I begin to type this, people are gathering at the high school track in Burns, Oregon, roughly a 2-hour high-speed drive east across the Central Oregon desert from my little cabin in the woods. They are there to hold a candlelight vigil for Marine Lance Corporal Dale Peterson, who died in Iraq on April 23. Funeral services will be tomorrow afternoon followed by a graveside service with full Marine Honors. The Patriot Guard Riders will be there; that sad little band of Fred Phelps followers, if they have a single functioning brain cell amongst them, will not. Governor Ted Kulongoski, himself a Marine (my years of experience have taught me that nobody who ever served in the Corps ever uses the word "former") and as is usually the case when an Oregonian war casualry is laid to rest, will be in attendance...

The State of Oregon east of the Cascade Mountains is - like much of the intermountain West - a large and relatively unpopulated space. The small towns that make up the majority of the map dots in this vast geography are widely spaced and the distances between them more effectively measured by driving time than miles. The loss of an individual citizen in any of these small communities creates an outsized echo because of their nature and size; the pain is perhaps more widely felt because of the understanding of what that loss means in places like these. As with any small town in the country but perhaps even a bit more so because of the remoteness of the region, there is a particular sharpness to the pain that a cummunity feels at the loss of a son or daughter...

If you are the praying sort, pray that God will gather his soul to His breast and bring him peace. Pray that his family and loved ones will be bolstered by the strength of God's love and find solace in His promise of eternal life. This is a time to step aside from the bitter arguments of the day. It is simply a moment to pay respect to another small-town Oregonian who paid the ultimate price for the responsibility that he took upon himself as a member of the United States Marine Corps...

The debate continues unabated over our involvement in Iraq, but there will be another day to discuss that in places like Burns, Oregon. Whether the ongoing conflict is honorable or dishonorable is, at a moment like this, immaterial; the service of people like LCpl Peterson was and is honorable. They have done - and continue to do - what they were asked to do regardless of the personal risk; there is nothing more that could be requested of them. For that, people like Dale Peterson deserve nothing less that our utmost respect. Rest in peace...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:05 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

A Tough Day At The Office For Our Nation's Wiretappers 

...there's this collection of carefully inked English-language words on a failing piece of 18th-Century parchment that comprise what is known as the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. That collection of words, in its entirety, reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration - through its chief personal rights asssasin John Ashcroft - embarked on a barely disguised effort to roll back numerous rights that Americans had taken for granted throughout most of the previous century, primarily through various vehicles such as The Patriot Act and an Executive Order expanding the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authority to spy on just about anybody who didn't look the part of John Wayne or Chuck Heston. Promises were made and, as it turns out, not kept by the FBI (and perhaps others); abuses were committed; lies were told and rules were ignored...

Despite the fact that it turns out that FBI agents either lied to the FISA court or simply ignored that bothersome bit of bureaucratic box-checking in the process of spying on any old body they wanted to, the Department of Justice - which apparently doesn't have a clipping service to keep track of stories about its own actions - has decided to make a visit to Congress to ask for expanded eavesdropping authority to address the existence of cell phones, email, and the Internet that weren't covered by FISA back in the '70's....

This is what is known as "Bad Timing".

Any normal sentinent human creature would be expected to anticipate that United States Senators who have only just successfully patted down the hair on the back of their necks after the discovery that the FBI had grabbed that ol' 'Executive Authority' football and flat-out run with it in contravention of every concern that those same Senators had about privacy rights aren't going to be immediately receptive to any lame suggestion that the same authority that they had just been caught red-handed abusing ought to be extended. That's not the way of Bushco, however; they bellied right up to the bar with the sterling white smile of any good car-lot "associate" with oily smooth words about 'trust and 'danger' and 'terror in our midst'...

This ugly little kite didn't fly in front of Jay Rockefeller's Senate Intelligence Committee, and it shouldn't ever get off the ground. The proof is in the pudding, the fat is sizzling nicely in the fire that the Bush administration kindled, and there isn't a reason in the world for any American, much less a Member of the Congress of The United States who has been slapped across the face by a White House that either can't understand or refuses to accept the simple 230-year-old idea of three equal branches of government should be expected to look across the room at a bunch of sweating Bushco minions seeking expanded rights to spy on anybody they wish with anything but revulsion in his or her face. It's always nice to have smarter trolls if it's your bridge that you are trying to restrict access to, but even the smartest trolls in the unemployment line aren't going to help you when you are on the wrong side of the Fascist Dictatorship/Something Like Democracy line...

In homage to the Good Doctor Thompson, we can say that there are some ugly sky-blotting clouds of vultures coming back home to roost for the Justice Department right now, and the smell of their droppings threatens to cloud human reason beyond any capability to understand the weak arguments that these people are trying to offer. The FBI has displayed an absolute disregard for the standards that were legally established for their guidance, and the Man In The Corner Office has displayed a shocking inability to remember what he had for breakfast, much less to whom he talked about regarding firing US Attorney's with a couple of months ago - which is remarkable considering how seldom that sort of thing has happened during the Dubya era. All of that, coupled with the fact that the Bush Justice Department is full to the scuppers with people who have demonstrated a deaf, dumb and blind understanding of the hallowed founding document that is the basis for their very mission, casts the very trustworthiness of these jokers in a seriously bad light...

They don't even get style points on this one. There isn't any such thing as "Nice try" when the subject is just how many microphones, cameras, and monitors get to be placed in the most secret and private corners of the lives of American citizens. At the very least, one has to say that laziness is no excuse for failure to protect. At a higher level, one has to say that there isn't any such thing as a fishing season on the lake of civil privacy; if "they" have already followed us home to wreak havoc with new terrorist attacks as Gee Dub is always insisting, it is a failure of his Homeland Security system and his foreign intelligence system and not a failure of the American people to adequately sacrifice their right to be secure in their homes from casual inspection...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:45 PM 0 comments

Monday, April 30, 2007

Feelin' The Fear 

...morning news tidbit on Oregon Public Broadcasting radio at 6:05 a.m.:
The number of Portland-area residents seeking concealed handgun licenses has spiked in the two weeks since a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University.

Even before the news reader took a breath to start the second sentence, you just knew what phrase that second sentence was going to contain. We feel the Fear, even though we are more likely to die crossing the street than we are to be gunned down in a classroom or a mall. We have a need deep down at the ribonucleic acid level to feel as though we are, if not evening the odds, at least giving ourselves a working chance if the OK Corral comes calling; it's the Fear feeding on our primordial experience with large furry meat-eaters. Every day now schools from the elementary level to colleges are shut down by threats scrawled in a bathroom or left on an answering machine delivered by some nitwit looking for some twisted fun or just a day off, thanks to the Fear. Men carrying umbrellas are sending schools into lockdown, because of the Fear. And now our friends and neighbors are going to be packin' heat and looking for a bad guy's twitching eyebrow as the signal that it's going down and a hail of gunfire is the ticket to saving their lives (and maybe being a hero)...

It's time to remember those manners your mother taught you, say 'please' and 'thank you', and don't make any sudden moves. Wouldn't want to provoke the person next to you...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:25 AM 0 comments

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