The letter I sent to my congressman and senators today

Press reports today indicate that the former chief of staff of the Vice President of the United States Lewis Libby has told a federal prosecutor that he was authorized by the President of the United States to “leak” national intelligence data on the Iraq situation to selected members of the press in order to counter political opposition to administration policies.

If the reported claim by Mr. Libby holds any truth it means that the Commander in Chief of US Armed Forces has endangered National Security for political gain. Please consider how you as an elected representative of the people of the xxxxxxxxx should investigate the truth of this claim.

It is my strong belief that if this claim is true the President should be impeached in the House and tried by the Senate. The prestige of the presidency and the security of the country would be compromised by any other course.

Dream Candidate

It seems that I often end up voting for a political candidate because they are the least offensive alternative as opposed to a really attractive choice. Since the next national election cycle is about to start (does it ever really end?), I though I would list those things which would make a candidate attractive to me in hopes that someone would care (Ha!). So here goes:

1. My candidate should care about the law. This means that the candidate should see the law as the way we as a society validate and regulate public behavior and should recognize that circumventing the law even to achieve results that are good harms society. Another way to say it is that the end doesn’t justify the means.

2. My candidate should care about and honor the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The law represented by these documents is particularly important to our society. These concepts are what make America free, and ignoring them is as harmful to our cherished freedom as any terrorist threat. If people die at the hand of terrorists because we have honored these concepts then those deaths are a part of the cost of freedom as much as the deaths of soldiers in a just war. Freedom is not free.

3. My candidate should be truthful. I’m not too concerned about the little white lie type of untruthfulness (“I love that dress”, ”come over anytime”, etc). I’m talking about the elephant in the living room kind of untruthfulness (“it’s all about the WMD’s”, “I wasn’t AWOL, I just though they wouldn’t miss me”, “I don’t know who the ‘Swift Boat Veterans’” are, etc). This kind of big lie shows contempt for those who are lied to, and ultimately destroys the candidates credibility so that nothing they say can be believed.

4. My candidate should embrace compromise. Opinion poles show that there are many important issues facing our nation over which we are nearly equally divided. The only way that progress can be made in such an environment is to forge compromise. Compromise by the way doesn’t mean getting your way, it means working together to find solutions that both sides can live with.

5. My candidate should value scientific results. Many of the challenges that face our society are involved with science. Ignoring the findings of science because they conflict with the candidate’s beliefs or those of the power centers that support the candidate is ignoring our best opportunity to understand what is true and to solve some of our hardest problems.
That’s enough for now, maybe more later.

Dubiety

I’ve often wondered at the entomology of the nickname Dubya, usually applied to our illustrious president. It turns out that there is justification to think that the source of this moniker is more intellectual than I thought (I know the use of “intellectual” in a sentence referring to our president will disturb many of you.).

One of the time wasters I follow on a more or less daily basis is Word of the Day at http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/ . Today’s definition is for the word “Dubiety: the condition or quality of being doubtful; also, a matter of doubt. Now if there is anything these days that is doubtful it is Dubya and his policies.

The Cost of Energy

The terrible coalmine disaster in West Virginia last week that killed a dozen miners serves as a reminder that energy, no matter how it is produced, has costs beyond the dollars we pay for it. Our ability to be air-conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter, to travel virtually at will, to produce and deliver food and other goods in abundance is dependant on the production of huge quantities of energy.

At this point in the civilization of man this energy can come from a very limited number of sources. We can extract it from fossil fuels like coal and oil, we can extract it from the splitting of atoms, or we can extract it from the sun either directly or as hydro and wind power. Each of these sources has financial, political, environmental and human costs.

The reality is that if we want to maintain the level of civilization we have come to expect we will have to exploit all of these sources, and pay their costs. The only choice we have as a society is which of these sources we will exploit most aggressively.
So the next time you turn on a light or the air conditioner think about the costs that that action implies, and which risks we should be taking to make it possible.

Saving our Nation

We’ve heard a lot lately from the gang of “W” about what we have to do to save the nation, which brings me to think about just what we mean by a nation in this context.

Does Save the Nation refer to the land, the hills and valleys and rivers etc? If that is so then shouldn’t the focus of saving the nation be on protecting the land and its features from damage?

Does Save the Nation refer to our people? If that is so then shouldn’t the focus of saving the nation be on seeing that every child is well nourished, well educated, and provided with decent housing, and that people can find places to work and neighborhoods to live in?

Does Save the Nation refer to our culture? If that is so then shouldn’t the focus of saving the nation be on maintaining our most cherished freedoms, of speech and press and religion and to fair trial and open courts?

Or does Save the Nation refer to our political system? If that is so then shouldn’t the focus of saving the nation be on having a fair and free electoral process and on the principles and practices of government that have become the standard here during the last 200 years?
So if we want to Save the Nation, why aren’t we protecting the land? Why aren’t we taking care of the people? Why are we forgetting due process? Why are we trying to gain electoral advantage by manipulating voting districts? Why are we allowing rich corporations and lobbyists to buy our political process?

George and Bill

I was reading an article last evening about the partnership between George Bush( the elder) and Bill Clinton which has raised billions of dollars for aid to the victims of both Hurricane Katrina and and the Tsunami last Christmas. I was surprised to discover that the idea for this partnership came from George Bush(the younger, also and heretofore know as “W”). I was surprised because it seems to have been a great idea and as we all know “W” hasn’t shown much of an aptitude for good ideas in the last 5 years (maybe even longer).

It seems lately that people have become so polarized that no one, certainly no one involved in politics, has been willing to partner with anyone from the “other side”. It just seems to be about stating your position and taking pride in your ability to be uncompromising. People, this is not something to be proud of. If America’s founding brothers were this polarized, our constitutional founding might have been as blood stained as the current state of Iraq. If the history of the last decade tells us anything it should be that democracy works worst when no one is willing to compromise.

So if George and Bill can find it in their hearts and minds to bridge the many differences that separate them and work together to accomplish worthwhile goals then the rest of us should be willing to get down off of our high horses and work together to make this country work.

Anyway, Happy New Year!

Why do I want to blog?

I am a bit concerned that I write this as an expression of personal vanity. I think I have useful things to say, but I wonder if anyone wants to hear. Perhaps that is due to my own insecurity. At any rate, I will proceed, let the reader beware.