I just caught this video of former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-AL) and it’s simply stunning. I admittedly didn’t catch the DNC debate, I think it’s way too early to think about the emerging presidential campaign, but now I wish I had.

He’s saying everything we’ve all been saying on the left. All of those things that bloggers and pundits have been screaming but Democratic politicians have been too scared to say publicly, Gravel says. The war was lost from the moment Bush started it. The War on Terror is doomed to the same failure as the War on Drugs. I’m not afraid of any nations from a war standpoint, though I’m terrified of potential economic disasters.

Sadly, we’ll never see this man in the White House. He’s speaking too candidly, too honestly. He’s going to get trounced by a John Edwards or Barack Obama. I like both of those guys a lot but they really are worried about image, while I don’t see Sen. Gravel having that problem at all. A beautiful speech, right there.

Here’s a bombshell for you. It seems the high level investigations within the Bush administration aren’t poised to end any time soon. Now the lens focuses on Condoleeza Rice, asking about her involvement with the 2003 uranium in Niger claims.

Since taking over as chairman of the House investigative committee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, renewed his call to investigate what Rice knew about the Niger uranium claim.

He has said Rice has failed to adequately answer his questions in a series of letters he has sent the secretary.

In one letter, Waxman called on Rice to outline who at the White House “kept resuscitating” the disputed report after the CIA blocked its inclusion in an October 2002 Bush speech on Iraq.

You’ll recall that Rice some time ago Rice said that someone “deep in the bowels” may have known about the problems concerning the Niger claims. I’d be curious as to how all that worked. Here’s a fun little bit, though:

Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Wednesday that the department “will be consulting with the White House on this matter.”

Casey also noted Rice has addressed “this four-year-old issue on many occasions, and the subject already has been exhaustively investigated.”

And even though Rice can legitimately be called upon to testify about the State Department, her testimony may be restricted by White House regulations, a State Department official said Wednesday.

The official said the White House will not allow current or former staff to testify about internal White House matters, and has categorized Niger uranium claim as an internal issue.

Of course. Everything that we don’t want to talk about? Well that’s an internal affair so no one can testify about it. Between this and the potential “interview while not under oath off the record behind closed doors with no followup” that they offered, it’s really a wonder if there has been such a vehemently secretive administration in recent memory, or if we’ll see another in our lives. Honestly, at this point it’s not even like a right/left issue.

Sometimes I get really disappointed with other blogs around here, in that they never seem to pick up on any issues regarding religion. AMERICAblog adores the gay/lesbian stories, the others stick with generally political stories but dip into civil rights type issues when it’s anything but religion. So I was incredibly annoyed to find that while Crooks and Liars linked to Bill O’Reilly’s talking points, there was no video from his rather revealing interview with Richard Dawkins.

There are so many severely stupid things in this interview it’s difficult to list them all off. To start with, I’m actually impressed with how humble Bill is during all this, which I’m going to assume is not evidence of him becoming a better person (Geraldo, anyone?), but rather possible evidence that when paired up with someone irrefutably smarter than himself he turns much softer.

Note, for example, that he doesn’t actually say that Christ is the true Messiah or any of that. He actually goes so far as to say that it’s “true to me,” which I will readily admit is a far more progressive comment than I would ever expect out of O’Reilly. A tip of my hat to him in that regard, arguing for the personal nature of Christianity over its true historicity. Of course, this is also the guy who wrote that Jesus was primarily a philosopher and that’s why we should celebrate Christmas, so who knows.

The far more bothersome part of the interview came later when O’Reilly brought up Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. In “The God Delusion,” Dawkins spends a long time explaining first of all that Hitler wasn’t an atheist, but secondly that their atheism had nothing to do with what they did, and thirdly that they were killers on that magnitude not because they were more evil than anyone else but because of 20th century technology. He dismantles the argument handily, yet O’Reilly brings it up like he’s hit on gold.

Which brings me to my conclusion, and why O’Reilly annoys me. Like him or not, Jon Stewart actually reads his guests’ books. When he had Ramesh Ponnuru on, he actually read “The Party of Death” before interviewing him and brought up points from the book itself. O’Reilly obviously didn’t even read the preface to “The God Delusion” but attempted to hold a debate with Dawkins anyway, and proceeded to use talking points that are handily dismissed within the book’s pages.

It’s just a shame that other blogs avoid these stories. Also, sorry about having such a religious bend lately to any of my older readers who hopped in before the recent switch. When my schedule permits I’ll be back to the grind.

If you’ve ever wondered why the atheist movement in the United States has failed to get any ground, here’s your answer: people who accuse the Dawkins and Harris types of being overly militant. Now I will agree that Sam Harris is a little further in that direction than I’d like in the sense of he wants to eradicate the religious whereas I’d like to convert them, this article just brings the problem of organization to the forefront.

Among the millions of Americans who don’t believe God exists, there’s a split between people such as Greg Epstein, who holds the partially endowed post of humanist chaplain at Harvard University, and so-called “New Atheists.”

…

Epstein calls them “atheist fundamentalists.” He sees them as rigid in their dogma, and as intolerant as some of the faith leaders with whom atheists share the most obvious differences.

This infuriates me. I’m not exactly sure how one could be called a non-fundamentalist atheist. That would seem to imply an atheist who isn’t rigid in his dogma. Meaning he isn’t very convinced that there is no god, which I believe would mean he’s not an atheist at all but rather an agnostic. You can’t really be an atheist and be wishy washy about the whole concept. Obviously you can’t prove there’s no god, but on the same token unless there’s adequate proof of one we atheists will continue to believe there isn’t. But I digress.

But Epstein worries the attacks on religion by the New Atheists will keep converts away.

“The philosophy of the future is not going to be one that tries to erase its enemies,” he said. “The future is going to be people coming together from what motivates them.”

I agree, and hence my problem. People seem to want atheists to ignore extremely fundamental differences in belief that harbor massive ramifications if left unchecked simply because common goals exist. That seems extremely patronizing, as though we’re all saying “I know you’re too stupid to come to my side, but you’re helpful so I’ll let you keep holding onto your little fantasies.”

Call me an optimist, but I really do believe that most people can handle a godless world. Furthermore, I don’t believe that we can just impress them with our actions and assume that they’ll come around on their own volition, we’re simply going to have to go to them and convince them. I don’t understand why being vocal about one’s beliefs is “militant”.

Militant to me is marching with signs and invading churches to throw pamphlets around. I’m not a fan of that and the closest we have to that is Brian Flemming, who certainly does nothing quite that bad. If I’m a militant for refusing to coddle those who I believe have the ability to be converted, then dammit I’ll wear that with a badge of pride.

It’s times like these I get the feeling the Catholic Church just drifts about wherever they think is the most politically acceptable while still seeming “holy”. I never understood the concept of “limbo,” since it seems like a random assumption to answer the question of what happens to those who die before they get a chance to be saved. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about it any more, because they decided to get rid of it.

The document stressed that its conclusions should not be interpreted as questioning original sin or “used to negate the necessity of baptism or delay the conferral of the sacrament.”

Limbo, which comes from the Latin word meaning “border” or “edge,” was considered by medieval theologians to be a state or place reserved for the unbaptized dead, including good people who lived before the coming of Christ.

“People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from eternal happiness, whether they are Christian or non-Christian,” the document said.

You know, frankly, I don’t think what people find difficult to accept should have the slightest bearing on anything. If there’s a limbo, there’s a limbo. Just because it seems hard to accept by the public doesn’t mean jack unless God himself sent down the decree that it’s no good.

In writings before his election as Pope in 2005, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made it clear he believed the concept of limbo should be abandoned because it was “only a theological hypothesis” and “never a defined truth of faith.”

Now this I agree with 100%, and thus agree with it as a reason to eschew it from the faith. It does beg the question of how infallible popes can be if they disagree with each other over time. You’d think that, since each one has the express track to God’s meaning and intentions, they shouldn’t get things like that wrong. Yet, somehow, they do. Curious.

While Alberto Gonzales testifies, I caught this story. It seems that, for some reason, the United States and Australia are exchanging refugees. Unsurprisingly there appears to be some kind of law broken, but even ignoring that (and quoting AmericaBlog), who thought this was a good idea?

The mainly Asian refugees intercepted heading for Australia would be considered for resettlement in the United States, while Cuban and Haitian asylum-seekers hoping to live there could be despatched to Australia.

The US State Department said the exchange would involve a maximum of 200 people a year.

…huh? Okay, so, people seeking asylum in the United States go to Australia and vice versa. Now, I’m no immigration expert, and certainly not an asylum/refugee expert, but it seems to me that someone seeking asylum isn’t immigrating specifically to that country, but rather they’re trying to get out of another one. So all that happens is they go to a different country. What the hell is that accomplishing?

The deal was apparently designed to deter refugees by frustrating their desire to join relatives and emigre communites and transporting them “halfway around the world,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

I reiterate: …huh? This is the most nonsensical idea I’ve ever heard of. So, just to piss them off, we’re going to throw them to another continent. And thereby separate families permanently. After all, if they’re trying to sneak over a border, they aren’t exactly well off, so now they’ve got an ocean between them. Fantastic.

Sometimes I can’t even get mad at news items because I just don’t understand them.

You know, as the discussion about the Virginia Tech massacre goes along, a lot of debates have come up. Gun control, national security, the like. I expected all of that even if I don’t consider it terribly appropriate, but what surprised me was something that came up in a video I caught on ThinkProgress. It’s a comment on the situation by University of Michigan professor Juan Cole.

Remember that we’re all concerned, as we should be, about these events at Virginia Tech today. In Iraq this is a daily event. Imagine how horrible it would be if this kind of massacre were occurring every single day. And the people of Iraq feel that either the Americans are not stopping it or they’re actually causing it.

For the moment I’m going to ignore the last half of that, as it’s the beginning that really struck me. It’s entirely accurate, of course. Suicide bombers have killed over 100 students at Iraqi universities, a couple dozen civilians die daily from random attacks and about the same number of American soldiers die each month (give or take) in such incidents. Not shootouts on the battlefield, mind you, but sporadic attacks in the middle of cities. Not a real problem.

Around 43,000 people will die this year from car crashes. Between 15,000 and 20,000 will be murdered. Nearly 30,000 will kill themselves. Nearly 5,000 will drown. Over 3,000 will die of accidental poisoning. Roughly 3,000 more will die from complications related to medical care or surgery. This is even ignoring the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands dying from cancers, heart disease, etc.

In Darfur, the death toll climbs up closer and closer to one million, topping 600,000 so far. For every 10,000 people, there is more than one death per day. In a city the size of New York, with over 8,100,000 people, that would equate to 972 people violently dying every single day.

People die by the tens of thousands on this planet every day. Disease takes millions, starvation, murder, freak accidents. The human population shifts drastically by the hour. But reading and watching the news here one would conclude that the only deaths we’ve seen in a month or so have been the 33 in Virginia and Anna Nicole Smith.

Which is not to belittle either tragedy, they have their victims and my heart goes out to them. But is it really worth the national frenzy? Friends of mine said they were going to go and get guns right now so they could protect themselves. As though the nation were currently swarming with maniacs just waiting to break into homes and onto college campuses to recreate this tragedy.

George W Bush has recently made an appearance in Virginia, made an obligatory speech and posed for photo ops. He did the same for Terri Schiavo. When New Orleans drowned, Darfur sank into Hell, and a tsunami wiped out a chunk of Asia, Bush played guitar and sat around until forced to make a perfunctory statement.

We can’t simply say that domestic terrors grip us more than international, given that we watched Terri Schiavo more than even the New Orleans drownings, and we certainly don’t pay much attention to the deaths that occur every day. In fact, in the day that those 33 died in Virginia, more than 32 died elsewhere in the nation.

Again, the tragedy is real, the pain of the victims and their families is real. But is it worth the media circus, or is it more that the story is dramatic and exciting?

The VT tragedy has been all over the news for the past day and a half, and I haven’t really had it in me to sit down and write very much about it. We all know what happened, what can I add? Today, though, the killer was identified.

Virginia Tech police today identified the shooter who took 32 lives as well as his own Monday as student Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old South Korean national and resident alien.

The body of the senior English student was found in one of four classrooms in Norris Hall where he took most of his victims, said Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell R. Flinchum.

When the story came out that the killer was “Asian-looking,” my first concern was that it would turn out that he’s Arab. It’s strange, though, how our reaction to things changes on something like that. If he was Iranian? Pandemonium and the War on Terror would have gotten a giant kick in the ass. South Korean? Well that seems fairly incidental.

I must admit, this was fairly encouraging:

The White House declined to discuss calls for tighter gun control. “Today is a time to focus on the families, the school and the community,” she said. “The facts of the case need to unfold.”

Damn right. This issue has nothing to do with gun control. Even with strict regulations and background checks, people will get guns and people will get killed. Remember, every killer has their first victim. Up until then his record might be spotless, and a background check will be clear. I don’t want to see this turn into a gun debate any more than the O’Reilly vs. Geraldo debate should have been about illegal immigration.

A press conference held on campus this morning also left many questions unanswered in the worst gun rampage in U.S. history: What was Cho’s motive? Why did school officials not notify the student body of the early two killings before the disaster in Norris Hall? Did Cho have any help in preparing for his rampage?

I’d like those questions as well. A man doesn’t go on a spree like that for no reason. Rob a bank or mug one person, maybe. This was obviously planned, though, and I think we need to figure out what happened. The fact that the campus stayed open and police weren’t combing the area? That’s inexcusable and I truly believe those people deserve a piece of the blame in this.

I’m not a praying man, but my thoughts will be with the families and friends of the victims. Here’s to hoping this doesn’t turn into a media circus that focuses more on titillation and ratings than the well-being of the people affected.

I swear it feels like just yesterday I was angrily writing about why saying criticism of Ann Coulter is attacking free speech, but here I am doing it again. In bars and on message boards, I see the same complaint surrounding the firing of Don Imus both from his television simulcast on MSNBC and from his actual radio program: they’re coming after our free speech! It’ll be you next!

For the love of whatever you find holy, stop that. Don Imus was an employee and was being paid to have his mug on television and his voice on the radio. If they decide they don’t like what he’s saying, for whatever reason, they can choose to let him go. That’s how the media works. This was not a situation where the United States government arrested Imus for being racist and put him in jail over saying something mean. That would be an affront to free speech.

If people think that a man being fired for something he says on television is an affront to free speech or censorship means preventing free expression, then they might want to stop watching television and movies or listening to the radio. Everyone is censored, people are constantly prevented from saying things. And people are fired all the time after doing something live. Think about how many SNL cast members were fired after saying “fuck” on live television. I have yet to hear anyone come to their defense.

And look at it the other way around. Doesn’t arguing that media companies can’t fire people who say things they dislike attacking their freedom of speech?

Think about it. You’re MSNBC, you hire a cast of pundits and hosts because you like what they say and want your viewers to hear the expressed opinions and whatnot. Something changes, the hosts and pundits are saying things you never expected, and now your station is propagating viewpoints or making comments that you heavily disagree with or downright detest. Isn’t it perfectly within your rights to let those people go to prevent your station from being associated with such things?

I don’t think there is a single person arguing on Imus’s behalf who also argued on Bill Maher’s when he said the 9/11 hijackers weren’t cowards. People are defending what he said, not free speech in general. I didn’t want Maher to be fired from ABC because I thought what he said was, while offensive, something that deserved to be said. I can’t begrudge ABC for not wanting to have that on their network and it would be idiotic of me to say a television station has no right to limit what its employees say.

This is not an issue about free speech. Period. For the record, I supported Imus losing his MSNBC simulcast but not his radio show. Hopefully he’ll find a home on Sirius/XM. Seems more his audience.

Man, this is a story I wish I’d been paying attention to from the get go. So apparently the White House wants a “war czar” to be in charge of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and they’re having difficulty finding anyone to take the position.

The highest-ranking White House official responsible exclusively for the wars is deputy national security adviser Meghan O’Sullivan, who reports to national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and does not have power to issue orders to agencies. O’Sullivan plans to step down soon, giving the White House the opportunity to rethink how it organizes the war effort.

Unlike O’Sullivan, the new czar would report directly to Bush and to Hadley and would have the title of assistant to the president, just as Hadley and the other highest-ranking White House officials have, the sources said. The new czar would also have “tasking authority,” or the power to issue directions, over other agencies, they said.

Is it just me, or does the White House seem to not have a damn clue what the Constitution says? I’m going to be cribbing a bit from Colbert, who quipped so perfectly, “Yes, it’s be nice if the White House had a chief who could command the military… some kind of commanding chief, who could chiefly make commands to the military…”