04/04/2002

Looking for a One-Eyed Man

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” or so the saying goes. Today, the land of the blind is Israel, the West Bank and Gaza and there is no king rising. All are blind with the blood of the innocent, and everyone knows who’s at fault. The other side. The other side, if you take sides. If you try not to take sides, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
03/28/2002

War is Heck

Are we at war? I’ve been searching for an answer to that question for months now, scanning the newspapers, watching tee vee. It should be an easy question, a true/false, multiple choice at most. Instead, I keep coming up with answers that look like they belong in the essay section of a Philosophy mid-term.

Let’s start with true/false. We are at war: true. Flip on the tee vee and there’s the president talking about how we’re at war. There’s Senator Lott chastising the Democrats for being disloyal “in a time of war.” But would they know? Mr. Bush was a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, although he did little fighting or piloting and Mr. Lott was, well, he was a cheerleader. Those reservations aside, on the face of it, you’d have to say we’re at war.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
03/21/2002

Fog of War

The phrase “fog of war” has been cropping up in the media with increasing frequency in the past few months. Coined by the Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz, it’s meant to describe the confusion of the battlefield and the difficulty commanders face making coherent decisions in chaotic conditions.

The forecast calls for continued fog of war and no town seems more socked in than Washington, DC. Dick Cheney’s back in town, after an 11-nation tour of the mid-east, where he was able to drum up exactly zero support for military action against Iraq. Thank goodness the administration strutted and boasted and thumped its chest first, and then went out and tried to put together a coalition. Saddam sits back and grins as yet another member of the Bush family fails to remove him from power.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
03/14/2002

Ecclesia Culpa

We are now more than half way through Lent, the 40-day period of solemnity, abstinence and penitence observed annually by Catholics the world over. Lent this year is more solemn and penitent than usual, due to a lack of abstinence. The American Catholic Church is reeling from wave after wave of disclosures about priests molesting children and cover-ups by bishops and cardinals.

It’s not the first time this particular type of scandal has erupted and, sad to say, it won’t be the last. The pederast priest has become a stock character in the national consciousness, along with the unscrupulous politician and the violence-prone postal worker.
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By floegel | Posted in Catholicism, Commentary | Comments (0)
03/07/2002

Bushwhacked

Presidential candidates, challengers usually, often ask, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Why wait four years? This is the age of instant gratification. To help your assessment, let’s consult a list compiled by Dr. David Sprintzen of Long Island University. Dr. Sprintzen looked at the first six months of the Bush administration, before the terrorist attacks, before the war. Here’s some of what he found.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
02/28/2002

Enron Without End

Are you still following the Enron scandal? Do you obsessively log onto the Washington Post’s web site every morning and check out the latest he-said, she-said “what did they know and when did they know it” gossip from the previous day’s hearings?

Probably not. Few of us do, nor should we have to. We all have more immediate concerns and besides, we know the basic plot lines. A bunch of executives at in the energy industry made huge campaign contributions to politicians and in exchange, the politicians forgot about the people they are supposed to represent and instead let the energy executives run wild and greedy through the corporate suites, the result being bankruptcy for Enron and economic ruin for thousands of innocent people.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
02/21/2002

Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Did you know smoking pot makes you a better driver? Hard to believe, but getting stoned before you get behind the wheel of a car may be the best thing you can do for highway safety.

On January 25, the Burlington Free Press ran an AP story about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturning the conviction of an Idaho man for driving while impaired. The man, Matthew Patzer, admitted to smoking pot before turning the key in the ignition. As it transpires, the Idaho state legislature never got around to adding marijuana to the list of banned narcotics, and since Idaho law only forbids driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, the federal judges ruled, ipso facto, that Mr. Patzer and his lawyer had found a loophole.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (1)