Category: News & Comment

My hero (yes, I have met him), Archbishop Desmond Tutu is among the many who are just not that into the new pope, according to
Reuters..

Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate and Africa’s best-known cleric, criticized both Joseph Ratzinger’s conservative views on social issues and doctrinaire defense of the Catholic faith…

“There is a multiplicity of faiths and you’ve got to be open to the realization too that Christianity doesn’t have a corner on the God market,” he said…

“God is not a Christian and we sometimes make out that God is the preserve of one particular faith,” he said.

“We need church leaders who are open to interfaith dialogue, who are aware that the truth is not encapsulated only in the Christian faith.”

Ratzinger has in the past dismissed other churches as “deficient.”

The archbishop, and all of us fed up with extremism, was hoping for someone who would take the church in a different direction.

Tutu told Reuters last week an African or Latin American Pope would reflect the growth of Catholicism in the developing world.

He also said he hoped John Paul’s successor would lift the Church’s ban on condoms, viewed by many African governments and health experts as one of the best ways to halt the HIV/AIDS epidemic ravaging the continent.

Some 25 million sub-Saharan Africans live with HIV/AIDS.

Tutu said he hoped Pope Benedict would prioritize the needs of the poor and adapt his views.

“In his record as heading the congregation responsible for the (Catholic Church) doctrine, the new pope was clearly someone who held very strongly to a rigid line that most people would find to be a very conservative line.

“We hope that sitting on the papal throne will have the effect of easing these rigidities,” he added.

One of the main thrusts of this year’s legislative session in Florida was to be limiting the supposedly runaway propensity of residents to amend their state constitution.

Even though Florida has the kind of constitution that is intended to be amended (unlike the federal one), and no one had any complaints until some initiatives that Jeb was against passed, the “problem” has been painted to be so egregious as to demand immediate action.

Floridians still remember Jeb pledging to work up a “devious” plan to keep the class size amendment from ever being enacted. Today’s Miami Herald shows he is still determined to overturn the voters’ decision.

Voters in 2002 approved the class-size amendment, which mandates that class sizes be reduced between now and 2010. Although the amendment so far hasn’t been as costly as first predicted, Bush and Republican legislative leaders want voters to change it…

Powerful South Florida, where most state education dollars go now, isn’t too thrilled. Under Jeb’s new plan, they might be worse off than they are now.

Bush insisted that his push in recent days to stress the extra money for South Florida school districts does not mean his class-size proposal is in trouble.

It would take a three-fourths vote of both the House and Senate to put the governor’s class-size amendment before voters in a special election and a three-fifths vote to place the amendment on the ballot in the 2006 election. Democrats are unified in opposition so far to Bush’s plan, meaning a special election is unlikely.

Rep. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat, also expressed skepticism about Bush’s funding proposal, saying he does not want to alter a constitutional amendment based on a promise for more money.

“None of this is covered by a constitutional amendment,” said Gelber. “It’s an unenforceable promise. This isn’t a game show where you say let’s take the mystery prize behind Door No. 1.”

Florida House Democrats put out a great statement on the issue today and plan a news conference in the morning to really shred Jeb.

The Legislature—Not the People—is Responsible for “Cluttering” the Constitution

…the ongoing debate has failed to stress one important fact—it is not the voters who are behind most constitutional amendments; it is in fact, the Legislature.

…the voters account for less than 20 percent of all constitutional amendments that have made it to the ballot since 1968. Clearly, if there is a problem, it is with the legislature, not the voters…

Despite the fact that the first line of the Constitution says that all power is vested in the people, the Republican majority apparently believes they are in a better position to decide what should be in the people’s constitution…

The citizen initiative process exists to provide voters an opportunity to have their voices heard after becoming weary from attempting to get the legislature to pay attention to their concerns. Without Florida’s initiative process, many important constitutional amendments would never have been adopted, including Florida’s smoking ban, pre-kindergarten initiative, homestead exemption, limitations on property taxes, and class size reduction. In each of these cases, citizens took their case directly to the people after the legislature ignored their pleas…

How did this happen? A scientific laboratory operated by the United States government has published results of a study of Big Bang related conditions that could be interpreted to suggest that it took God longer than seven days to create the universe!

The substance that existed just after the universe was born was more of a liquid than a gas, according to an experiment that claims to have created a new state of hot, dense matter.

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory smashed together basic particles of atomic nuclei, called quarks and gluons, in the giant Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).

Out of that demolition derby came something unexpected: instead of a gas of free quarks and gluons, the matter seemed to be liquid- like, according to a press release from the laboratory released on Monday.

The research will be published in the journal Nuclear Physics A.

The Democrats on Foreign Relations did their level best to derail the nomination of hotheaded Bush political operative John Bolton as US Ambassador to the United Nations but it was Republican Sen. George Voinivich of Ohio who shut down the vote for now:

A Senate committee delayed a crucial vote today on President Bush’s nomination of John R. Bolton to be the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations after a Republican senator stunned the Foreign Relations Committee by saying he might oppose the nomination if forced to take a stand.

The delay exposes Bolton, a controversial State Department hawk, to at least three more weeks of efforts by Democrats to derail his nomination as other Republicans waver over allegations that Bolton intimidated subordinates over disagreements about policy and intelligence assessments.

The delay also marks a setback for the Bush administration, which was trying to push the nomination through the committee in the face of the wavering support of two moderate Republicans, Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

But it was a third Republican, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, who voiced doubts about Bolton today and forced a delay in the vote.

“I’ve heard enough today that I don’t feel comfortable about voting for Mr. Bolton,” Voinovich said. “I’ve heard enough today that gives me concern as a member of this committee.”

Washington Post:

The House this week will consider $8 billion in tax breaks targeted to the energy industry at a time when some of those companies are enjoying soaring profits from high consumer prices.

The vast majority of the tax breaks would benefit companies that produce and supply traditional forms of energy, with a large portion going to the oil and natural gas sector.

CBS News:

President Bush doesn’t fare very well in the latest CBS News poll with an approval rating of just 44 percent and still limp support for his proposed Social Security overhaul.

But at least he’s doing better than Congress, which earns a thumbs-up from only 35 percent of Americans – nearly as low a rating as it received last month immediately after lawmakers’ unpopular intervention in the Terri Schiavo case…

[President Bush’s] overall approval rating remained little changed at 44 percent, but his disapproval rating climbed above 50 percent for only the third time since he took office.

And despite the president’s efforts to rally support for his Social Security plan, seven in ten Americans say they’re uneasy about his approach to the issue.

More people (49 percent) say the president’s plan to partially privatize the system is a bad idea than say it’s a good idea (45 percent).

Significantly, there’s been no increase in support for Mr. Bush’s Social Security plan since he and other Republicans began actively campaigning for it in January.

This was published before Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope:

Journalists have been poking around Ratzinger’s teenage years during World War II, apparently searching for any pro-Nazi sentiment…

The German cardinal is a hero to doctrinal conservatives, while liberal camps are supposedly rooting for Martini, considered more open-minded.

The 78-year-old Bavarian prelate is the supposed favorite of cardinals leaning toward an elderly figure to lead the church for likely just a few years while churchmen try to absorb the legacy of the late pope’s 26 years at the helm.

A Sunday Times of London profile on Ratzinger, saying his doctrinal watchdog role has earned him uncomplimentary nicknames like “God’s rottweiler,” reported on his “brief membership” in the Hitler youth movement and service, in the final stretch of the war, in a German anti-aircraft unit.

In his memoirs, Ratzinger speaks openly of being enrolled in the Nazi youth movement against his will when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory. He says he was soon let out because of his studies for the priesthood.

Two years later, he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit as a helper, a common fate for teenage boys too young to be soldiers. Enrolled as a soldier at 18, in the last months of the war, he barely finished basic training.

Ratzinger’s wartime past “may return to haunt him,” the British paper wrote on the eve of the conclave’s start.

Other accounts indicate that he is even more reactionary than Pope John Paul II. With polls showing huge numbers of American Catholics in disagreement with their church over issues like birth control, ordaining women to be priests and allowing priest to marry, the appointment of this leader with a hint of fascism in his past could be construed as a shot across the bow to the faithful in this country.

Isn’t this how schisms get started?

Rupert Murdoch:

We don’t agree with that. We are fair and balanced and we challenge anyone to show FOX News has any bias in it. People appreciate it for a number of reasons: it’s better presented, it’s more entertaining. We are first with the news. We beat CNN time and again on every big story. The major networks have been openly biased to the point of being very leftist. That’s different from being middle-of-the-road. I don’t call myself a conservative. I call myself an independent.

For those of us who keep wondering when the American people will wake up to the GOP over-reaching, maybe this is it:

Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner [who served as a “manager” during the Clinton Impeachment] has launched his next assault on freedom. The full House Judiciary Committee is set to vote as early as next week on H.R. 1528, which creates a new group of mandatory miniumum penalties for non-violent drug offenses, including a five year penalty for passing a joint to someone who’s been in drug treatment.

That’s right: Passing a joint to someone who used to be in drug treatment will land you in federal prison for a minimum of five years.

The “Defending America’s Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005” (H.R. 1528) was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) on April 6, and it has already passed out of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

The one thing we know for sure is that jailing pot heads would only serve to jam more nonviolent citizens into our over-crowded prisons. What is fuzzy about this is how a joint-passer would learn the rehab status of the recipient of said joint. Every pot smoker would have to learn to ask, “Dude, have you ever, like, been in rehab?”

Even if you don’t care about legalizing pot, the US leads the world now in the percentage of its citizens in prison. Please visit the Marijuana Policy Project site and send an email to your Congressional representative to tell them you are against sending more nonviolent offenders to jail over something as silly as passing a joint to rehab graduate: Go HERE to send an email to Congress.