Taking My Swings

The Christian Right is around 25% of the population, about the same as the (somehow very religious AND very violent) Sunnis in Iraq who held power for so many years before our invasion. What gives both groups their power is their vehement zealotry, and their undiluted belief that they know Allah/God's plan and it involves them taking power, implementing that plan and punishing evildoers, i.e., those who think the plan is something different, or the dolts who aren't privy to Allah/God's messages.



The former Texan exterminator Tom Delay, in an attack on Justice Anthony Kennedy, revealed his own provincial small-mindedness when he foamed at the mouth because Kennedy made a reference to international law and did some research on the Internet. He was screeching that Kennedy's behavior was "Absolutely Outrageous!!" and that some kind of discipline or punishment was warranted. To the choir he’s preaching to, you might as well say "work of the devil — booga booga" than mention those two things.

On the first, Justice Kennedy merely pointed out the fact that most civilized countries exclude minors from execution. As for Internet research, nothing could make more sense -- unless it's to a Christian Right type who thinks the Internet is synonymous with pornography and other dirty, evil things -- as the World Wide Web is an archived repository comprised of, among many other things, the files of dozens of law libraries.



Among the biggest criminals in the history of the human race are the American tobacco industry executives, men who to this day live lives of wealth, opulence and a certain amount of prestige, while purveying products that have killed millions, products they continue to sell domestically and in a widely-expanding foreign market.



For those Catholics who think that the new pope will show some open-mindedness to reform and change in the areas of abortion, divorce, female priests, homosexuals, right-to-die, pre-marital sex and other issues: You should realize that he was the one choice of the electing cardinals most likely to absolutely toe that strict dogmatic line, because he was the primary drawer of that line under the former pope, was in fact the enforcer of the conservative (i.e., hopelessly antiquated and backward) rule book concerning those matters.