{"id":378,"date":"2007-12-15T00:05:11","date_gmt":"2007-12-15T05:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/2007\/12\/15\/is-congress-insane\/"},"modified":"2007-12-15T00:05:11","modified_gmt":"2007-12-15T05:05:11","slug":"is-congress-insane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/2007\/12\/15\/is-congress-insane\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Congress Insane?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are a lot of issues that I really understand both sides of. Most anything with money will benefit some at the expense of others. I don&#8217;t think gun control or drug policy have &#8220;clean&#8221; answers: I&#8217;m not at all comfortable banning guns, but I&#8217;m not at all comfortable allowing felons to own automatic weapons; I don&#8217;t get why smoking marijuana is a crime, but I&#8217;m not at all opposed to putting heroin dealers in jail. And I still struggle with the issue of abortion.<\/p>\n<p>But there have been some really strange things going on&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n    <li>In 2006, the military established a policy manual describing what was&#8211;and what wasn&#8217;t&#8211;an acceptable interrogation method. In particular, it banned:\n<ul>\n    <li>Forcing detainees to be nude for interrogations<\/li>\n    <li>Engaging in sexual acts, real or simulated<\/li>\n    <li>&#8220;Beating, shocking, or burning&#8221; them<\/li>\n    <li>Mock executions<\/li>\n    <li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Waterboarding\">Waterboarding<\/a><\/li>\n    <li>Starving or freezing them<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nIn my mind, this is a no-brainer. We&#8217;re not some backwards third-world nation led by a cruel military dictator. (Well, snide comments aside&#8230;) We&#8217;re the freaking United States of America, and we pride ourself on being &#8216;advanced&#8217; past barbarism. The 2006 military policy confirmed this.<\/li>\n    <li>A bill that would require the CIA to follow the same rules <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/huff-wires\/20071213\/intelligence-bill\/\">got struck down<\/a> in Congress. Of course, don&#8217;t be so quick to fault Congress&#8211;if it had made it through, the Administration said it would veto it anyway.<\/li>\n    <li>So what did Congress pass? I&#8217;m glad you asked! The House passed <a href=\"http:\/\/thomas.loc.gov\/cgi-bin\/query\/z?c110:H.RES.847.EH:\">House Resolution 847<\/a>. It&#8217;s a non-binding resolution, which is a nice way of saying that it&#8217;s utterly pointless and carries no weight. It contains lots of feel-good stuff endorsing Christmas. But a lot of people seem troubled by the fact that it also &#8220;recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world.&#8221; I mean, I&#8217;m a Christian, and, if you define &#8220;great&#8221; in terms of numbers as opposed to quality, it&#8217;s a <em>fact<\/em> that Christianity is one of the &#8220;great religions.&#8221; But I&#8217;m still left with an uneasy feeling about this. Even if &#8220;it&#8217;s true,&#8221; why is Congress giving Christianity its stamp of approval? It just seems really strange. And our Founding Fathers <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Establishment_Clause_of_the_First_Amendment\">were uneasy<\/a> about it, too. (Of course, the First Amendment bans Congress from <em>establishing<\/em> a religion, not endorsing it. But <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Endorsement_test\">a case from the 80&#8217;s<\/a> gives us a clarification that government endorsement of a religion still construes an Establishment Clause violation.)\nBut of course it&#8217;s a moot point, because the First Amendment starts off with &#8220;make no <em>law<\/em>,&#8221; and this isn&#8217;t a law. It&#8217;s a Resolution. And it doesn&#8217;t really <em>do<\/em> anything except proclaim to the world that the United States likes Christianity. And frankly, I&#8217;d like it if our proclamations to the world were kept in line with our Constitution.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong: I&#8217;m not against Christianity. I just find it really, really weird that Congress is endorsing it. Especially when half the world thinks we&#8217;re in a war against Islam, where endorsing Christianity is only going to further that misinterpretation?<\/p>\n<p>Raise your hand if you think that Congress has lots its mind!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are a lot of issues that I really understand both sides of. Most anything with money will benefit some at the expense of others. I don&#8217;t think gun control or drug policy have &#8220;clean&#8221; answers: I&#8217;m not at all &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/2007\/12\/15\/is-congress-insane\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11,14,15,21,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanitarianism","category-insanity","category-lists","category-living","category-politics","category-rants-raves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}